`[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 113 (Thursday, July 26, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5419-S5449]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CYBERSECURITY ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 470, 
S. 3414, which is the Cybersecurity Act.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 470, S. 3414, a bill to 
     enhance the security and resiliency of the cyber and 
     communications infrastructure of the United States.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I would now yield to the senior Senator from 
the State of Iowa, Mr. Grassley.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.


                           Pastor John Fuller

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it is my privilege to introduce Pastor 
John Fuller to my fellow Senators, and I thank Pastor Fuller for 
opening the Senate with prayer. It is my privilege to highlight my home 
pastor and church.
  Pastor Fuller and his wife Kay are visiting the Nation's Capital this 
week.
  Since 1998 Pastor Fuller has been the senior pastor at Prairie Lakes 
Church in Cedar Falls, IA. Pastor Fuller is a native of Iowa. He was 
born in Onawa and grew up in Sloan. His family moved to Sheridan, WY, 
when he was in the eighth grade. He graduated from high school in 
Sheridan. He played both high school and college football. He is to 
this day obviously a die-hard Broncos fan. You won't know that, but I 
sure know it. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of Sioux Falls 
and a 1990 graduate of Denver Seminary with a master's of divinity 
degree.
  He was an associate and preaching pastor at First Baptist Church in 
Forest City, IA, before coming to Cedar Falls in 1998, to Prairie Lakes 
Church, and has been senior pastor. I have been worshipping at Prairie 
Lakes Church for 58 years come this August 29. The church has changed 
its name and increased its congregation over the years, but its heart 
has remained the same and very constant.
  In 1855 a small group known as the Baptist Society started this 
church. In 1862 it became the First Baptist Church. The first 45 years 
that I worshipped at First Baptist Church, at various times the 
congregation numbered 200 to 300 people. Under Pastor Fuller's 
leadership, the number of worshipers has grown to about 2,000, with 
worship centers in Osage, Waterloo, and soon in Grennell, IA, besides 
the main campus in Cedar Falls, IA. In 2005 a new building was 
constructed, and the name of the congregation then became Prairie Lakes 
Church.

  The worship service is very informal. That has changed in the 58 
years I have attended there, but the service has always been Christ-
centered, and that has not changed. Prairie Lakes Church

[[Page S5420]]

is multigenerational, with an extraordinary vision for the future. 
Worship services are heartfelt, creative, practical, Bible-based, and 
here to serve Christ and here to serve all--those who just stepped over 
the faith line as well as those who have been longtime followers of 
Jesus Christ.
  Prairie Lakes Church is affiliated with the Baptist General 
Conference. Prairie Lakes Church is all about loving God, loving 
people, and influencing the world. Everyone is invited to worship with 
us--including anybody here in Washington, DC--through streaming online 
at prairielakeschurch.org.
  In closing, I would remind all, according to the Scriptures, in 
Corinthians, we are all called to be ambassadors of Christ, and that is 
how I see Pastor Fuller.
  I am also grateful to Pastor Fuller for his leadership and 
faithfulness to this congregation. After 58 years, in my looking back, 
I know God's word has been preached faithfully at this congregation. 
Pastor Fuller has contributed significantly during his tenure and 
continues to do so.
  This is what Pastor Fuller had to say about our church:

       There are a lot of good churches around the valley. We're 
     lucky to have that. I think people get attracted here because 
     we just stick with the Bible. We're authentic. We're 
     invitational, and we try to keep things simple.

  These attributes have attracted many, and I believe they will 
continue to attract many more and the church will continue to grow.
  Lastly, I pray that God will continue to shine His light through 
Pastor Fuller, his family, and the Prairie Lakes congregation. It is my 
privilege once again to introduce Pastor Fuller to this Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate my friend's remarks about his 
pastor. They were very well thought out, and I appreciate them very 
much.


                                Schedule

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the first hour here today will be equally 
divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. The 
majority will control the first half and the Republicans the final 
half.
  I filed cloture last night on a motion to proceed to the 
cybersecurity bill. I hope we can reach an agreement to have that 
cloture vote sometime today. If not, we will have it tomorrow.
  When a major storm ripped through the Mid-Atlantic region last month, 
it left millions of people without power--I repeat, millions of people. 
I was at my home here in Washington, which is different from my home in 
Searchlight, NV. In Searchlight, the wind blows a lot, so you can hear 
the wind. It is kind of pleasant for me. But the wind we heard at our 
home in Washington was not pleasant. At 9:30 or 10:00 at night, it was 
loud and it was abusive and it was, quite frankly, a little scary.
  Our power was not affected, but that wasn't the case for millions of 
other people. Residents of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and 
the District of Columbia soon realized how quickly a major power outage 
can alter life as we know it. I talked to Senator Manchin of West 
Virginia, and a week later power was still out in large parts of West 
Virginia. He said it was the worst storm they have ever known in West 
Virginia.
  This power outage altered life as people knew it here in the entire 
eastern part of the United States. The blackout was devastating to many 
families and many businesses. But it was also minor compared to the 
devastation that malicious cyber terrorists could wreak with a single 
keystroke. I repeat, as damaging and frightening as this storm was, we 
could have a malicious cyber attack by terrorists that would be far 
more devastating than this violent storm. Cyber attackers could all too 
easily shut down the electric grid for the entire east coast, the west 
coast, and the middle part of our country. Any one attack could leave 
dozens of major cities and tens of millions of Americans without power. 
We know, because we were shown in a room here in the Capitol, how an 
attack could take place and what damage it would do, so we know this is 
not just make-believe.
  Without ATMs or debit card readers, commerce would immediately grind 
to a halt. My daughter, who lives here in the DC area, lost power when 
the storm hit. They waited for a number of hours, and then they took 
all the food out of their freezer, they gave away what they could, and 
they threw the rest away. And that was the way it was all over. Their 
power was out for about a week, and it made it very difficult. They are 
fortunate enough to have a basement, and the heat wasn't oppressive 
down there.
  Without refrigeration, food would rot on the shelves, the freezers 
would have to be emptied, and people could actually go hungry. Without 
gas pumps, transportation arteries would clog with abandoned vehicles. 
Without cell phones or computers, whole regions of the country would be 
cut off from communication and families would be unable to reach each 
other. Without air-conditioning and without lifesaving technology and 
the service of hospitals and nursing homes, the elderly and sick would 
become much sicker and die. Most major hospitals have backup power, but 
it is only for a limited amount of time. It depends on how much fuel 
they can store, and that is very limited.
  The devastation is really unimaginable, but we have heard these 
ominous scenarios before. What many Americans haven't considered is 
that the same power grids that supply cities and towns, stores and gas 
stations, cell towers and heart monitors also power every military base 
in our country. About 99 percent of electricity used to power military 
installations comes from outside the bases. Nellis Air Force Base, one 
of the largest in the world of its type, has some solar energy there 
that they have developed, but over 90 percent of their power, in spite 
of that, comes from outside the base, and more than 85 percent of that 
power is provided by the same electric utilities that power homes and 
businesses and schools in the civilian world. So a cyber attack that 
took out a civilian power grid would also soon cripple our Nation's 
military--very soon.
  Although bases would be prepared to weather a short power outage with 
backup diesel generators, within hours, not days, fuel supplies would 
run out. Command and control centers would go dark. Radar systems that 
detect air threats to our country would shut down. Communication 
between commanders and their troops would go silent. And many weapons 
systems would be left without either fuel or electric power.
  Much of what we do militarily is now done by computers and done very 
remotely. It is no secret that the drones that operate for our country 
all over the world are not operated from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or 
Somalia, they are operated from a base 35 miles outside Las Vegas. That 
is all done with electricity. So in a few short hours or days, the 
mightiest military in the world would be left scrambling to maintain 
base functions.
  That is why our top national security officials--including the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the National Security 
Agency, the Secretary of Defense, and the CIA Director--have said that 
the kind of malicious cyber attack I have just described is among the 
most urgent threats to our country. In fact, they have said that unless 
we do something and do it soon, it is not a question of if, it is only 
a question of when.
  There have already been cyber attacks on our nuclear infrastructure, 
our Defense Department's most advanced weapons, the NASDAQ stock 
exchange, and most major corporations. These are just a few of the 
things that have already been attacked by cyber.
  Senator McConnell and I recently received a letter from a bipartisan 
group of former national security officials, including six former Bush 
and Obama administration officials, that presented the danger in stark 
terms:

       We carry the burden of knowing that 9/11 might have been 
     averted with the intelligence that existed at the time. We do 
     not want to be in the same position again when ``cyber 9/11'' 
     hits--it is not a question of whether this will happen; it is 
     only a question of ``when.''

  That is what they said, not me. The group said the threat of cyber 
attack ``represents the most serious challenge to our national security 
since the onset of the nuclear age sixty years ago.''
  The bill before this body, proposed by a coalition of Democrats and 
Republicans--including Chairman Lieberman

[[Page S5421]]

and ranking member Collins--is an excellent piece of legislation 
endorsed by many members of the national security community.
  In my view, it is not strong enough, but it is a tremendous step 
forward, and I admire the work they have done. I know some of my 
colleagues have suggestions on how to improve this legislation. I have 
a few of my own. There is plenty of room for good ideas. Some of them 
are already on the table. It is my intention for Senators to have an 
opportunity to have a robust debate on these proposals. Let's stick 
with what this bill is all about and let's have as many amendments as 
people feel is appropriate.
  The national security experts agree we can't afford to waste more 
time. The question is not whether we should act but whether we will act 
in time.
  As I mentioned at the start, we are scheduled to have this vote an 
hour after we come in tomorrow. I am working with Senator McConnell now 
to try to arrange a time, perhaps even today. My goal is to get on the 
bill. I hope we can get on the bill. It would be terrible for our 
country if we are not on the bill. I would like to get on the bill and 
have Senators Lieberman, Collins, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and the other 
committees that are involved come up with a list of amendments as we 
have done so well on a number of the bills we have worked through. When 
we come back next week, let's start doing some legislating and have 
some robust debate, get some of these amendments disposed of, and pass 
this bill on to the House.
  The House has done their bill. We can go to conference and get 
something done. It would be very important for our country.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.


                              The Economy

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday our Democratic friends took a 
vote that says a lot about the way they view the world. After nearly 4 
years of spending and debt, millions of Americans are still struggling 
amidst the slowest recovery in modern times, and the economy is flat on 
its back. Our friends on the other side think a great way to go forward 
is to raise taxes. Under the guise of pretending to care about the 
deficit, Democrats are pushing an ideological goal of a symbolic tax 
increase that would not even fund the government for 1 week. The vote 
we had yesterday--with all but two of the Democrats on board--allegedly 
doing something about the deficit wouldn't fund government for 1 week.
  They are not even pretending to care about the economy. They have 
sort of given up on the argument that this is about the economy. We 
know that because 2 years ago the Democrats agreed the higher taxes 
they are now fighting for would hurt the economy.
  Let's look at the economy then and the economy now. At a time when 
economic growth was 3\1/2\ percent, back in December of 2010, 40 
Democrats voted to keep rates where they were on the grounds that it 
was the best thing to do for jobs. In December 2010, 40 Democrats voted 
to keep the tax rates where they were because it was the best thing for 
jobs. Yet now when the growth rate is 2 percent--it was 3\1/2\ percent 
then, it is 2 percent now--and 13 million Americans are still out of 
work, they are voting to slam nearly 1 million businesses with a tax 
increase. Maybe they are expecting the GDP numbers tomorrow to be 3\1/
2\ percent. We will see.
  That is one of two things, either our Democratic friends don't even 
care about the economy and jobs anymore and are just embracing Thelma-
and-Louise economics--let's take everybody off the cliff and hope 
people support them for some other reason--or their economic world view 
is so far outside the mainstream of everyone else who has looked at the 
situation that they think 2 percent growth and 13 million Americans 
unemployed is good enough. Maybe they think that is as good as we can 
do. That is where this ideological crusade of theirs is taking them, 
right in that direction. I just hope for the sake of a struggling 
American economy that some of them soon see how misguided an approach 
this is.
  Let me repeat, 2 years ago in December of 2010, when the economy was 
growing at a rate of 3\1/2\ percent, 40 of our Democratic colleagues, 
the President, the Vice President, me, and the Speaker agreed to extend 
the current tax rates for 2 years because it would be good for jobs.
  Just yesterday, with two exceptions, every Democrat voted to raise 
taxes on 1 million businesses when the growth rate--the GDP increased 
rate--is 2 percent and 13 million Americans are looking for work. That 
is not a prescription for the economy; that is an ideological crusade. 
That is not about America's jobs; that is about the election 4 months 
from now.
  I yield the floor.


                       Reservation Of Leader Time

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). Under the previous order, the 
leadership time is reserved.


                           Order of Business

  Under the previous order, the following hour will be equally divided 
and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the 
majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the 
final half.
  The Senator from Colorado.


                         Production Tax Credit

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the floor of 
the Senate again this morning to urge my colleagues to vote to extend 
the production tax credit for wind energy. It is also known as the 
production tax credit. I know the Presiding Officer's home State of 
West Virginia has a robust wind energy sector as well. I look forward 
to coming to the floor and talking about the Presiding Officer's State 
in the future.
  The reason I am talking about the production tax credit is it is set 
to expire at the end of this year, and it will cost citizens in my 
State and the rest of the Nation their jobs. We cannot let this happen. 
Tens of thousands of vital jobs are dependent on the wind industry all 
across our great country.
  As I have mentioned, I come to the Senate floor on a daily basis and 
I highlight a State and talk about what the production tax credit has 
done to encourage economic growth in that State. Today, I wish to talk 
about the great State of Illinois, the land of Lincoln, where the wind 
industry is thriving. Illinois is an impressive example of how wind 
resources can be harnessed and put to good use creating jobs and 
supporting local communities.
  Overall, Illinois has the fourth largest installed wind capacity in 
the United States, with over 600,000 homes powered by the wind. If 
fully utilized, the wind energy resource in Illinois could provide 525 
percent of the State's current electricity needs. That is truly a 
staggering amount of electricity for the fifth largest State in the 
Nation.
  In 2011, Illinois was second only to California in the number of new 
wind energy projects completed, and they installed more wind turbines 
there than any other State in the country. Clearly, Illinois recognizes 
the economic potential wind energy holds for the future, as many other 
States have.
  Just last week in Illinois, Invenergy announced it completed 
construction of the Bishop Hill wind energy facility in Henry County. 
That is up in the northwestern part of Illinois, near Davenport, IA. 
The project covers 22,000 acres of farmland and includes over 100 wind 
turbines and can power 60,000 homes. The Bishop Hill project is clearly 
a huge investment in Illinois and our Nation's clean energy future. But 
the economic power of wind energy has been equally impressive. The wind 
energy there supports 7,000 jobs, it contributes close to $19 million 
every year in property taxes to local communities, and Illinois led our 
Nation in 2011 with over 400 new wind turbines installed.
  Just this month, Illinois State University released a report that 
estimates that the 23 largest wind farms in Illinois will contribute 
roughly $5.8 billion to the local economies over the lifetime of these 
projects. The construction of these wind farms generated over 19,000 
jobs that cut paychecks totaling over $1 billion for workers. These are 
good-paying, high-skill jobs that we are proud to have in our country 
and that American workers are proud to have and it is one part of the 
overall wind energy story.
  For example, the Odell Grade School, in Odell, IL, has a much needed 
project underway that will expand the school and make it more energy 
efficient. While this project is expensive, it will be paid for, in 
part, by payments from local wind farms. Wind energy is supporting a 
better education for Odell's youth without increasing taxes to the 
local residents.

[[Page S5422]]

  This is not unique to Illinois. It is happening all across our 
country. I have no doubt the people of Odell would agree with me that 
extending the PTC is a commonsense proposal. However, without Congress 
extending the production tax credit, our country and the wind industry 
literally face impending disaster. In fact, many wind energy 
manufacturers and producers have already been preparing for the end of 
the PTC by backing off their investments in many of these communities 
such as Odell and by announcing future layoffs of thousands of workers. 
It is just flatout unacceptable that we in the Congress would let this 
happen.
  I think everyone understands where I am heading. This is a serious 
issue that needs attention now--not next month, not in the fall, not in 
the lameduck session but now. The wind industry will not wait for us to 
extend the PTC at some date in the future. They have already begun to 
scale back their operations and move overseas. Further inaction is 
unacceptable. China is stepping into the breach and literally taking 
our jobs overseas. Other countries are prepared to do the same. For us 
in Congress to miss this opportunity to not only preserve jobs but put 
in place policy that would create thousands of good-paying jobs because 
of election-year gridlock is flatout unacceptable. If we don't act, our 
people in our States will suffer.
  I come to the floor every day to implore my colleagues to extend the 
wind production tax credit as soon as possible. The PTC equals jobs. We 
ought to pass it as soon as possible. I will be back next week to 
continue discussing the wind Production Tax Credit and urge us to be 
bold, take up this issue and extend the wind production tax credit. It 
is about American jobs. It is about maintaining our leading position in 
the world when it comes to clean energy development.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  Mrs. MURRAY. If the Senator could abstain from the quorum, please.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Washington.


                       Violence Against Women Act

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today in order 
to continue the efforts started right here earlier this week, efforts 
by the women of the Senate and the men who support the Violence Against 
Women Act to bring a simple, straightforward message to our friends in 
the House of Representatives: Stop the games and pass the inclusive, 
bipartisan Senate VAWA bill without delay.
  The Violence Against Women Act is a bill that has successfully helped 
provide lifesaving assistance to hundreds of thousands of women and 
families. It is a bill that passed the Senate 3 months ago today by a 
vote of 68 to 31. It is a bill that has consistently included 
bipartisan provisions to address those who are not being protected by 
it each and every time it has been reauthorized. But here we are, back 
on the Senate floor, urging support for a bill that should not be 
controversial.

  Just as we did on Tuesday, just as we are doing today, and just as we 
are going to continue to do in the coming weeks, we will be making sure 
this message resonates loudly and clearly both in Washington, DC, and 
back in our home States because we are not going to back down--not 
while there are thousands of women across our country who are excluded 
from the current law. In fact, for Native and immigrant women and LGBT 
individuals, every moment our inclusive legislation to reauthorize the 
Violence Against Women Act is delayed is another moment they are left 
without the resources and protection they deserve in this country.
  The numbers are staggering: 1 in 3 Native American women will be 
raped in their lifetimes--1 in 3. And 2 in 5 of them are victims of 
domestic violence, and they are killed at 10 times the rate of the 
national average. These shocking statistics are not isolated to one 
group of women; 25 to 35 percent of women in the LGBT community 
experience domestic violence in their relationships, and 3 in 4 abused 
immigrant women never enter the process to obtain legal status, even 
though they were eligible, because their abuser husbands never filed 
their paperwork.
  This should make it perfectly clear to our colleagues in the other 
Chamber that their current inaction has a real impact on the lives of 
women across America affected by violence, women such as Deborah 
Parker. Deborah is the vice chairman of the Tulalip Tribe in my home 
State of Washington.
  Deborah was repeatedly abused starting at a very young age by a 
nontribal man who lived on a reservation. Not until after the abuse 
stopped--sometime around when she was in the fourth grade--did Deborah 
realize she was not the only child suffering at the hands of that same 
assailant. At least a dozen other young girls had fallen victim to that 
man--a man who was never arrested for his crimes, never brought to 
justice, and still walks free today, all because he committed these 
heinous acts on the reservation. As someone who is not a member of a 
tribe, it is an unfortunate reality that he is unlikely to ever be held 
liable for his crimes.
  Reauthorizing an inclusive VAWA is a matter of fairness. Deborah's 
experience and the experience of other victims of that man do not 
represent an isolated incident. For the narrow set of domestic violence 
crimes laid out in VAWA, tribal governments should be able to hold 
accountable defendants who have a strong tie to the tribal community.
  I was very glad to see Republican Congresswoman Judy Biggert and 
several of her Republican colleagues echo those sentiments last week. 
They sent a letter to Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor. These 
Republican Members explicitly called on their party leadership to end 
this gridlock and accept the ``Senate-endorsed provisions that would 
protect all victims of domestic violence, including college students, 
LGBT individuals, Native Americans and immigrants.''
  So today I am here to urge Speaker Boehner to listen to the members 
of his own caucus and join us in taking a major step to uphold our 
government's promise to protect its people, people such as Maribel and 
Maria, two more constituents who come from my home State of Washington.
  As a transgender woman, Maribel has been subject to random acts of 
violence by family and boyfriends and strangers. She has been mugged 
and attacked on the street. She has suffered broken bones and cuts and 
bruises. She has been raped, and she was left for dead. What Maribel 
said to me was deeply concerning. She said:

       Not once have the police ever conducted an investigation, 
     much less shown any concern for me. Rather my experience with 
     law enforcement is one of harassment and abuse. I have been 
     ostracized by family and friends . . . in fact it is most of 
     my first memories.

  She experiences hate daily from those who think she has no place in 
our society.
  Then there is Maria. Shortly after their wedding, Maria's husband 
became a different man, she said. His abuse ranged from emotional to 
physical, and on two separate occasions he held a knife to Maria's 
throat threatening to kill her. He constantly threatened Maria with 
deportation back to Jamaica. Eventually, he refused to attend the 
interview with immigration authorities necessary for her to obtain a 
green card. Her application was denied for lack of attendance. She was 
angry and scared, but she found the courage to ask her husband for a 
divorce. In response, he raped her. Maria moved out of the house though 
her husband repeatedly tracked her down and assaulted her. To save her 
own life, Maria fled to Seattle with her two young children.
  It does not have to be this way. I was so proud to have been serving 
in the Senate in 1994 when we first passed the Violence Against Women 
Act. Since we took that historic step, VAWA has been a great success in 
coordinating victims' advocates and social service providers, and law 
enforcement professionals to meet the immediate challenges of combating 
domestic violence. Along with its bipartisan support, it has received 
praise from law enforcement officers and prosecutors, judges, victim 
service providers, faith leaders, health care professionals, advocates, 
and survivors.
  The Violence Against Women Act has broad support for one reason: It 
works. Where a person lives, their immigration status, who they love 
should not determine whether perpetrators of domestic violence are 
brought to justice. These women cannot afford any further delay--not on 
this bill.

[[Page S5423]]

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I would be happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. WYDEN. I think the Senator from Washington has made an 
extraordinary presentation in terms of outlining the facts of the abuse 
women face. Having done a series of forums around my home State--as my 
colleague knows, in our part of the country in Washington and in Oregon 
where there are many small communities of 10,000, 15,000 people, it is 
my experience--and I would be interested in getting the assessment of 
our colleague since she has been a leader on this--that without the 
Violence Against Women Act, it is my understanding that women in rural 
areas who face the kind of brutal treatment my colleague described 
would literally have nowhere to turn, so that the Violence Against 
Women Act for women in rural areas in particular is sort of the last 
line of defense for them.
  Mrs. MURRAY. The Senator from Oregon is absolutely correct. If a 
woman has been beaten and abused and believes she is a victim of 
violence with nowhere to turn, especially in a rural community where 
everyone knows everyone and a person doesn't know who to turn to, there 
is no place to go. The Violence Against Women Act provides the support 
of law enforcement officers and advocates so a person can get out of a 
very abusive situation.

  Mr. WYDEN. I am going to listen to the rest of my colleague's 
remarks, and I will have my own. But I just want to thank the Senator 
from Washington for her leadership. This is such an important issue. It 
is not about dollars and cents, and it is not about politics. It is 
about doing what is right for combating violence, and I commend my 
colleague.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank my colleague from Oregon. I know he is going to 
speak in just a few minutes, but I know he has spent a great deal of 
time traveling around his State and listening to these women and he 
knows personally from their stories how important it is that we cannot 
continue to delay this bill over something called a blue slip. It is 
not about a blue slip. It is about doing what is right.
  We have overcome the blue slip issue time and time again for issues 
such as FAA and Transportation bills and many other pieces of 
legislation because it is the will of the body to do so. So to tell a 
woman in Oregon or Washington State that this bill can't happen because 
of a blue slip is ridiculous. They have been told they can't get help 
for a lot tougher reasons. Let's not let a blue slip be what comes 
between them and the support they need.
  In fact, I say to my colleague from Oregon and all of my colleagues 
that on Tuesday the New York Times ran an editorial that gets to the 
heart of it. They said:

       House Republicans have to decide which is more important: 
     Protecting victims of domestic violence or advancing the 
     harsh antigay and anti-immigrant sentiments of some on their 
     party's far right. At the moment, harshness is winning.

  The editorial also echoed our sentiments that it does not have to be 
this way. It pointed out:

       In May, 15 Senate Republicans joined with the chamber's 
     Democratic majority to approve a strong reauthorization bill.

  It ends with what we all know it will take to move this legislation 
forward: leadership from Congressman Boehner. So today we are on the 
Senate floor to make this effort and to call for the same thing: 
leadership.
  It is time for Speaker Boehner to look past ideology and partisan 
politics. It is time for him to hear the stories of women across 
America who have not had the protection of this bill and to make a 
major step forward which will assure that a woman, no matter where she 
lives or who she is, will have the protections this great country can 
offer.
  So I thank my colleague from Oregon for his real passion and 
understanding on this issue and for taking the time to hear from women 
and men who have been impacted.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I wish to follow on the very important 
remarks made by our colleague, Senator Murray. As a result of the 
debate we have had in Washington, DC, I knew there was a significant 
problem, but until we held these forums across our State--we 
essentially went into every corner of Oregon--it really didn't come 
home to me how serious a problem this is.
  I wish to highlight for a moment or two this point I got into with 
Senator Murray with respect to rural areas, some of the stories. For 
example, I was told about a woman in central Oregon who essentially, 
faced with a very abusive relationship, spent the evening trying to 
hide out in ditches in the community. She would just run from ditch to 
ditch. Of course, a person gets pretty banged up and bruised when they 
do something like that, but she hid out in ditches through the night in 
order to avoid her abuser.
  But then it came to morning time and she wanted to get out. She 
wanted to get to the Safety Net program, which is a wonderful shelter 
in her area. But the fact was the only way to get out was to ask for a 
ride from the one person who had a vehicle in the community, and that 
was the person who abused her in the first place. So, literally, in a 
rural community--and I heard this account just recently--she had 
nowhere to turn. That is why I characterize the Violence Against Women 
Act as--especially for rural women--the last line of defense between 
them and the abuser.
  In another community--I know my colleague, the Presiding Officer, 
will identify with this, and I enjoyed going to West Virginia and the 
like--in a rural community in the eastern part of our State, it was 
described to me that there was no transportation out of the community. 
There was no transportation at all. The woman involved was going to 
literally have to stay there and face continual abuse. The one vehicle 
in the community was a fishing shuttle.
  I am sure the Senator from West Virginia identifies with that. It is 
something we have in our rural communities--a vehicle that takes folks 
fishing.
  The owner of the fishing shuttle said: I am going to be the one to 
take this woman to safety. I don't need to be reimbursed. I don't need 
to have some kind of government program or something. I am going to do 
it because it is right.
  That is how that woman in a rural community escaped her abuser. She 
got out. She got free. She was able to shake out of the clutches of the 
abuser because the fellow who owned the fishing shuttle stuck up for 
her.
  But I think this is Senator Murray's point: I do not think we can 
accept that all across the country we are going to have fishing 
shuttles available in order to rescue women who are subject to this 
kind of abuse. I think that is pretty farfetched, and the good hearts 
of Oregonians came through in that particular situation, but we have to 
reenact this program.
  The fact is, Mr. President and colleagues, this has been the law of 
the land for more than a decade. There has not been a shred of 
partisanship in it. It is not about ideology. It is about protecting 
women from brutality. I had thought, frankly, we had gotten over some 
of the arguments against this legislation that had been trotted out in 
the past.
  For example, it was often said in the past: Well, maybe these abuse 
cases are not abuse. Maybe they are just kind of family matters. They 
are going to get settled when the family kind of calms down. Maybe 
somebody got upset about something, and then in a day or so everything 
is going to go back to normal.
  That is not the case. This is about repeated instances of violence, 
repeated instances of violence you cannot slough off as a family 
difference of opinion. It is a crime. It is brutal violence. That is 
why we need this legislation, and we need it reauthorized.
  I think it is also especially important, given some of the budget 
cuts we have seen that are particularly hitting small communities like 
a wrecking ball. For example, in Josephine County--a rural part of our 
State--they are in the position where, when a subpoena goes out, they 
essentially do not have the resources to follow it up. In other words, 
the subpoena is used to, in effect, set in motion the law enforcement 
process to bring the abuser to justice, and I was told by the key law 
enforcement officials in Josephine County--in a community forum I held 
in Medford, OR, for folks from the southwestern

[[Page S5424]]

part of the State--that they literally do not have the resources to 
follow up on how to ensure that abuser is brought to justice.
  I would make a couple of additional points. I see colleagues on the 
floor waiting to speak.
  I also want to talk about the costs that are associated with this. 
You have two kinds of costs. First, you have direct health care costs 
that stem from the violence you see perpetrated against women, and then 
also you have costs in terms of lost productivity. At a time when we 
are getting hit very hard by unemployment--and we know we are in a 
productivity race with Asia and India and China and other countries--we 
cannot afford the costs, the health care costs of the violence against 
women that ends up having women land in hospital emergency rooms and 
the like, nor can we allow this lost productivity at a time when we are 
pushing so hard to create more good-paying jobs.
  The protection that is offered through the Violence Against Women Act 
saves my home State of Oregon now millions of dollars through its key 
provisions. Safety from domestic violence would save Oregon more than 
$35 million per year in direct health care costs. Our State loses 
approximately $9.3 million per year in lost productivity from paid work 
as a result of domestic violence. The fact is, the preventive services 
offered by the Violence Against Women Act saves money, as does the very 
important work that is done by victim services.
  The study of 278 victims in my home town of Portland who received 
domestic violence and housing assistance found that those services 
resulted in more than $610,000 in savings during the first 6 months. So 
there are savings in terms of assistance, whether it is housing or 
counseling. Emergency medical care utilization is reduced as a result 
of emergency services, safety net services being available. Whether it 
is one measure or another, from a financial standpoint, reauthorizing 
the violence against women legislation makes sense.
  But at the end of the day, while the financial savings are 
substantial, it seems to me the Violence Against Women Act is about 
restoring dignity to women who have been abused in our country. No 
woman in the United States should be subject to the kind of physical 
abuse I have documented in cases coming from Oregon and that Senator 
Murray has described this morning. They strip our people--women in this 
country--of their dignity and their confidence and their ability, after 
they shake free from their abuser, to get on and have the kind of 
productive life they want for themselves and their family.
  Ultimately, this is about dignity. It is about doing what is right. 
This legislation has been on the books for more than a decade. There is 
no reason--none whatever--that this legislation is not passed 
overwhelmingly on a bipartisan, bicameral basis. I am going to do 
everything I can here on the floor of the Senate talking with 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure this legislation is 
reauthorized. Because what I saw during these community forums in my 
home State, from small towns across Oregon, should not happen in my 
State, it should not happen anywhere, because it is not right, and the 
Senate can take action to stop it.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.


                      Passing Appropriations Bills

  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, there has been a lot of talk about the 
dangers of raising taxes during a recession. President Obama famously 
said in 2009: ``You don't raise taxes in a recession.'' Our economy is 
certainly worse now than it was then. But that did not stop the Senate 
majority from pushing through a tax increase on our small business 
owners yesterday.
  We need to get our fiscal house in order, and that starts with 
budgeting in a responsible manner. Washington's primary problem is not 
a revenue problem. Washington's primary problem is a spending problem, 
and the Senate majority's actions have exacerbated that problem.
  The Senate has failed to pass a budget for the past 3 years. 
Meanwhile, our country is facing record deficits and an ever-increasing 
debt. This is the fifth straight year that Washington's excessive 
spending has led to a trillion-dollar deficit. It now sits at a jaw-
dropping $15.9 trillion. The Senate majority's only answer to this 
crisis is to raise taxes on our job creators during a time while our 
country has an unemployment rate of over 8 percent.
  Along with failing to produce a budget, the Senate majority leader is 
now backtracking on a pledge to enact every individual appropriations 
bill this year. Needless to say, I am disappointed. In fact, I think it 
is safe to say our entire caucus is disappointed.
  It was not too long ago that I was down here on the floor praising 
the majority leader in his efforts and those who would have us go 
forward and enact our individual appropriations bills. We believed we 
had a good-faith agreement to move these bills, to make the effort to 
function the way this body was established to work, to do our job and 
pass all of the appropriations bills so that the government operates on 
a budget the way every Arkansan does.

  Now the majority is telling us this is not going to happen. 
Determining how we spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars is a basic 
responsibility of Congress. We know tough choices have to be made in 
these appropriations bills, but moving forward is the right direction. 
The trend of continuing resolutions and giant omnibus appropriations 
bills has to stop.
  Enacting all appropriations bills in regular order would be an 
important step to reducing government spending. It would help balance 
our budget while investing in programs Americans have come to rely on.
  Moving forward on these bills would return the Senate to its proper 
function and provide a framework of spending so the American people can 
see and understand where their hard-earned money is going. Most 
importantly, it would help us back away from the fiscal cliff we are 
hanging on to.
  Here is the reality: We borrow around 40 cents of every $1 we spend. 
We are running record-breaking deficits every year. The average 
American family does not have the luxury to live by this sort of 
budgeting. If you tried to run your household, your business this way, 
the bank would cut you off. It is time we apply that lesson to 
Washington.
  We are at a crossroads in our country. If we continue down the path 
we are going, we risk going in the direction of Greece, Ireland, 
Portugal, and now Spain--each facing economic crises that have pushed 
them to the brink of default.
  If Congress continues the reckless spending, rather than crafting an 
immediate solution to this crisis, our actions will inevitably lead to 
an economic collapse. We cannot keep kicking the can down the road, 
which is exactly what we are doing by passing continuing resolutions 
and omnibuses after continuing resolutions and omnibuses. It goes on 
and on.
  Each one of us in this Chamber owes it to the American people to work 
together to help our country today and build a path of success for the 
future. Our Founding Fathers laid the foundation that allows the Senate 
to function effectively and efficiently, but it does require us working 
together.
  The American people are tired of the finger pointing that has stalled 
much of the work they have sent us here to do. That starts with trying 
to enact all of the appropriations bills through a regular process each 
year. I sincerely hope the Senate majority leader reconsiders the 
decision to cancel consideration of the appropriations bills, again, so 
we can get back to a normal budgeting process, get back to a normal 
method, an efficient method, a very transparent method, so the American 
people can see where their taxpayer dollars are going.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I assume we are out of morning business.

[[Page S5425]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is on the motion to proceed to S. 
3414.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3326

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of S. 3326; that the Coburn amendment at the desk be 
agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; that 
when the Senate receives the House companion bill to S. 3326, as 
determined by the majority and the Republican leaders, the Senate 
proceed to its immediate consideration; that all after the enacting 
clause be stricken, and the text of S. 3326, as passed by the Senate, 
be inserted in lieu thereof; that the bill be read a third time and 
passed; that a statutory pay-go statement be read, if needed, and 
passed with no amendments in order prior to passage, the motions to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be 
printed in the Record at the appropriate place, as if read.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object and would 
like to make a statement.
  I am basically opposed to the Senator's request, and let me explain 
why. The Finance Committee considered this bill last week, and we 
passed it out of committee by a voice vote without a single amendment 
being offered. Nobody on the committee offered an amendment. I think we 
cannot and should not delay the passage now. It passed unanimously, no 
amendments offered, and now is not the time to delay.
  This bill is fully offset. How? By extending customs user fees and 
corporate timing shift. This is not the first time we have used the 
corporate timing shift as an offset. I have a list--a very long list--
of the many times when this body has used this very same provision and 
very same offset. In fact, it has been used multiple times since 2005 
in trade bills and lots of other bills, so there is much precedent.
  I, nonetheless, understand Senator Coburn now has concerns about the 
offset, and I am willing to work with him to find alternate offsets in 
future trade measures. We need to move forward on this bill in its 
entirety as soon as possible. We can't pick and choose to move forward 
on component parts while leaving others to linger. There are real 
consequences for delay.
  This bill extends provisions of the African Growth and Opportunity 
Act--otherwise known as AGOA--trade preference program that would 
otherwise expire in September. Without swift passage of this bill, U.S. 
retailers do not have the certainty they need to place orders with 
African apparel manufacturers. Not only are these U.S. companies 
struggling to make the best decisions for their companies, but a 
substantial drop in orders has caused devastating job losses in Africa. 
The job losses are occurring why? Because of the uncertainty as to 
whether this provision will be extended. Right now the Senator from 
Oklahoma suggests we don't proceed.
  Another provision of this bill closes a loophole in the Dominican 
Republic-Central American-United States Free Trade Agreement that will 
save almost 2,000 yarn-spinning jobs in North Carolina and in South 
Carolina. And the Burma sanctions provision expires today. These 
provisions are all necessary parts of the delicate compromise we 
negotiated in advance with the House and that the Senate Finance 
Committee approved. Ways and Means Chairman Camp in the House and 
Ranking Member Levin in the House have made it equally clear they will 
not pass this bill in the House without the AGOA provisions included. 
So the House will not pass these provisions if the Senator is 
successful.
  I, therefore, urge my colleagues to pass S. 3326 as it passed from 
the Finance Committee, quickly and without amendment. For those 
reasons, I must object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, short memories are just that. In my 
opening statement in the Finance Committee on this bill, I made it very 
clear I opposed the pay-for in this bill. I had two amendments to 
offer. They were not offered because the chairman had assured me 
beforehand that he would object and rule them nongermane, even though 
they were not nongermane. As a matter of fact, we had offered what the 
Obama administration had already offered in terms of trade 
duplication--a $200 million pay-for that the administration supports.
  So let's talk about what is really going on here. We are a country 
that is $15.8 trillion in debt. We have a process that is not open, 
really, to the consideration of addressing real pay-fors for a real 
bill that I agree needs to pass. I have no objection to the underlying 
policies in any of the three components in this bill, but there is a 
process we continue to practice which has our country bankrupt. That 
process is the following: We are going to spend $200 million over the 
next 3 years, and then we are going to take 10 years to pay for it.
  We have $350 billion in waste, fraud, and duplication in the Federal 
Government that we have done nothing about as a Senate. Not one thing 
have we done to address the issues that are wasting the hard-earned 
money of the taxpayers of this country. So when we have a small bill 
and administration concurrence on something that should be eliminated, 
and yet we would rather not do that but just kick the can down the 
road, we are failing the American people.
  I have a great deal of respect for the chairman of our committee, but 
it seems to me that my conversations with the Speaker and Mr. Cantor 
and Mr. Camp in the House are much different than his. As a matter of 
fact, if we were to divide this, they would divide theirs and pass them 
both back over here, and we could do the same. What I have offered is 
to separate out these two from the AGOA package. I am for that. I just 
think we ought to pay for it.
  What I have offered, and I offer to do now if the chairman splits it, 
is to have 30 minutes on the floor to explain why I want to pay for the 
AGOA, then have a vote, and let it go. But we will not even do that. So 
not only do we not want to address the problems, we don't even want to 
have a debate and an opportunity to stand up and say whether we are for 
cutting wasteful spending, which even the administration is for. That 
is what is offered.

  So now we stand here, with Burma sanctions going to expire. I am 
going to tell you, I am not moving. I will object to any unanimous 
consent request that doesn't have a real pay-for for the $200 million 
for this bill out of real spending in the next 1 or 2 or 3 years, which 
is exactly what we offered to put forward in committee and what we have 
offered to negotiate. I am not going to be a part of kicking the can 
down the road again. I am not going to be a part of playing gimmicks 
where we ask corporations to overpay their taxes so we can get around 
the 1974 Budget Act and pay-go and essentially be dishonest with the 
American people about what we are doing.
  I understand I am not the chairman of the Finance Committee, but I am 
a member. And I am a Member of this body. Since I had no right in 
committee to offer an offset because they were ruled--they were going 
to be ruled nongermane, which they weren't, and now, consequently, we 
want to ram this through on a timed basis, I am not going to agree to 
that happening.
  So we need to start acting like grownups in terms of our debt and not 
kick the can down the road 10 years, and that is what we are doing. We 
are going to use 10 years to pay for something we are going to spend 
over 3, just like we did on the highway bill, just like we violated 
pay-go, just like we violated the budget agreement we just agreed to 
last August. Now we are going to continue to do the same thing.
  I have the greatest respect for my chairman. He has been here a long 
time. He knows a lot about these issues. I agree they need to happen, 
but they do not need to happen on the backs of taxpayers 10 years from 
now. We need to pay for what we are doing now.
  That is the whole point of this exercise. I want us to be able to 
have certainty. I want us to have the Burma sanctions continued. I want 
us to do the right thing. But I want us to do it in the right way, and 
we are not. So that is where I stand.

[[Page S5426]]

  I would defer to the chairman for his comments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I very much understand the frustration of 
the Senator from Oklahoma, and I understand his reasons for objecting. 
In a perfect world, I might be sympathetic with his reasons, but this 
is not the perfect world. This is a world where we try to do our best 
to do our work and get legislation passed.
  I personally don't have a problem with the Senator's suggestion that 
we could set 30 minutes aside and vote on his amendment as an alternate 
way to pay. I think the Senator understands this bill is fully paid for 
already. It is just the Senator would like it paid for in a different 
way.
  The problem I have in trying to arrange all this and put it together 
is I can't control other Senators. Other Senators may object to the 
Senator's provision. They may have their own bills. In fact, I can 
think of two or three right now who would very much take advantage of a 
process where the Senator from Oklahoma strips out the bill and offers 
his own pay-for because they would say: Oh gosh, this is now an 
opportunity for me to offer mine. That is what they will say to 
themselves, and then we are really stuck because the Burma provisions 
expire, as the Senator knows, today. We can't dally. We can't wait. The 
AGOA provision expires at the end of September.
  Now, one could say: Well, wait until the end of September. 
Unfortunately, a lot of American companies are uncertain whether we are 
going to extend past the September 30 date, and they are laying off 
people. Lots of job losses are already occurring as a consequence of 
the uncertainty. So my job, in putting together these several bills--
including PNTR for Russia--in the committee was to talk to Senators and 
try to find an accommodation where we could get it passed.
  I totally agree with the Senator on his main point; namely, how much 
fraud and waste there is and that it should be addressed and how 
important it is to get the debt down. As the Senator knows, yesterday, 
in committee, we talked about ways to address the so-called fiscal 
cliff, the very beginnings of the Finance Committee's finding solutions 
to the debt and some kind of grand bargain in the form of tax reform.
  The Senator is correct. He did file amendments with alternative 
offsets, and I did state the amendments would be ruled nongermane. That 
is true. In my judgment, they were not germane. And he did suggest at 
that time that he wanted to offer an amendment on the Senate floor. As 
I said, I am not personally opposed to having a vote on the Senator's 
amendment as long as there is a limited time of debate. But I do think 
and believe others will object, and they will want to have their 
provisions passed. I just believe at this point it makes sense to 
proceed with AGOA, the DR-CAFTA bill, and the Burma bill, and deal with 
how we do offsets at a future date, not right now because it just gums 
up too much else.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, what the chairman said is this bill is 
paid for. I would put forward to the American public that if they went 
to Wendy's this afternoon and said: Give me a double cheeseburger; and, 
oh, by the way, over the next 10 years I am going to pay for it, most 
Americans would not say it is paid for.
  What we are doing with this bill is taking custom user fees in the 
years 2021, 2020, 2019, and all the way down to pay for this bill. That 
is the problem. We will never solve our other problems until we get out 
of the mindset of saying because of the rules, we can stretch out the 
payment and call it paid for.
  This bill isn't paid for. It is going to be paid for by the people 
who import things 10 years from now, not now. That is the whole point. 
That is why we have a $1.3 trillion deficit this year. That is why we 
have at least 2 to 3 million people unemployed in this country--because 
of our debt. So the question is, Is there a point in time when we are 
going to stop paying for things in the future and pay for them now? 
That is my objection.
  I am fully open to passing this bill if somebody will just pay for it 
this year. If we are not going to pay for it this year, then we are not 
going to pass a bill by unanimous consent.
  I will tell you, nobody else operates this way. Nobody rationalizes 
that you can pay--and the other thing, this is just $200 million. To 
everybody outside of Washington that is one ton of money. Here it is 
peanuts. To say we can't pay for something worth $200 million in a bill 
to do this, right now, to start the self-discipline of paying for it, 
it just says we are not worthy of being here if we would not do that.
  So I would love to work out a solution, but there is a time and place 
where we have to change the direction of how we operate. For me, this 
is the bill that now says to me we are going to start paying for 
things. And if we can't pay for a $200 million pay-for in the same 
year, or at least the same 3 years we are going to actually spend it, 
then we are just not going to pass bills with my help.
  I am not speaking for just Tom Coburn. The vast majority of Americans 
want us to pay for things by cutting wasteful spending. The fact that 
we are going to take custom user fees over 10 years to pay for this is 
ludicrous. Nobody in the rest of the economy can go out and say: Oh, by 
the way, I want to consume it now, but I will pay for it 10 years from 
now--interest free. It doesn't work that way, and we ought not to be 
doing it.
  The chairman has my utmost respect. He has a tough job, I know that, 
of trying to do that. I will continue to try to work on solutions for 
this problem, but I am not moving from a position that we are going to 
pay for the things in the year in which we count them.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, may I ask what the pending business is 
now?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion to proceed on S. 3414.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the motion to 
proceed to S. 3414, which is the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.
  This cloture motion has been filed that will ripen sometime tomorrow, 
but I think it is the hope of Members on both sides of the aisle that 
we can proceed to vote on the motion to proceed today. I am hopeful 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle will vote to proceed, because 
although there continues to be some disagreement about the content of 
this bill and different approaches taken, I don't think there is any 
Member of the Senate who doesn't appreciate the fact that our country 
is currently under cyber attack every day, our businesses are victims 
of cyber theft every day, with the consequential loss of billions of 
dollars' worth of investments and, I would say, tens of thousands of 
jobs going elsewhere.
  So this bill is not a solution in search of a problem; it is an 
attempt to solve a problem. Although there may be differences still on 
different components of the bill, I hope everybody will join together 
in at least saying: Let's proceed to the debate, and let's see if we 
can reach a conclusion before we leave for the August break next week.
  I will report in this regard that this morning there was a second 
meeting held of those who have been most active in supporting different 
legislation that deals with the cyber threat to America. Senator 
Collins and I, Senator Feinstein, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Carper--
who introduced the pending matter, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012--
Senators Hutchison and Chambliss were there today, Senator Coats--who 
introduced the so-called SECURE IT Act--and then a group of 
peacemakers-bridge builders, Senators Kyl and Whitehouse, Senator 
Graham, Senator Coons, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Coats, again, 
who sits in two of the three groups, which makes him a superbridge 
builder.
  It was a very good, substantive discussion, in which we were all 
fleshing out the details of the various proposals. We are seeing some 
areas where

[[Page S5427]]

I think we feel we have a real opportunity to agree and some areas 
where it may be more difficult, but we haven't given up. But overall, I 
would say this process has been very encouraging. Basically, all the 
leading parties in the Senate and all the Senators are around the same 
table talking, which is very constructive to have happen. I appreciate 
that. To me, it is more reason to vote to proceed.
  I wish to begin by thanking the aforementioned Senators Collins, 
Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Carper, who joined me in sponsoring S. 
3414, which I wish to talk about a bit now in this opening statement.
  I also wish to thank the majority leader, Senator Reid, for seeing 
the cyber threat to America in all its urgency and reality last year, 
urging Senator Collins and me to go forward and work on legislation, to 
work across party lines to get a bill out and now to thank Senator Reid 
for keeping his commitment to bring this bill to the floor, even 
though, as always, there are clearly other important issues vying for 
this body's attention. But, to me, there is none more important to 
America's security and prosperity than this topic, which is 
cybersecurity and the cybersecurity bill that is now pending.
  I would like to make three points in my remarks to my colleagues.
  First is that the danger of cyber attacks against the United States 
is clear, present, and growing, with enemies ranging from rival nations 
to cyber terrorists, to organized crime gangs, to rogue hackers sitting 
at computers almost anywhere around the world. The pending matter, S. 
3414, Cybersecurity Act of 2012, responds directly and effectively to 
this danger.
  Second, this bill has been a long time in coming. In this regard, I 
note a letter sent out by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce overnight that, 
I must say, I found very disappointing overall because, if I may state 
it affirmatively, it doesn't embrace the same spirit I see Members of 
the Senate embracing; that although we have different positions, we 
can't afford to be inflexible. We can't be closed to compromise because 
of the urgency of the threat to our country and because of the general 
principle that has not been as evident in the Senate and Congress 
generally as it should be in recent years; that we never get anything 
done unless there is some compromise. I am not talking about compromise 
of principle. But if we go into every negotiation saying, I will only 
accept 100 percent of what I want, ultimately we are not going to get 
anything, if we can get 80 percent, 75 percent, 60 percent--
particularly when we are dealing with a threat to the security of the 
United States and our prosperity as real as the cyber threat.
  I hope our friends at the Chamber will reconsider the tone of their 
opposition and come to the table to talk with us about their concerns 
and see if we can't reach common ground because there is a larger 
national interest at stake than represented by any particular group or 
any individual Senator or their point of view.

  In their letter of July 25, 2012, signed by R. Bruce Josten, 
executive VP for government affairs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 
the Chamber says that:

       . . . S. 3414, the ``Cybersecurity Act of 2012,'' which has 
     been rushed to the floor without a legislative hearing or 
     markup. The bill was introduced just last week and remains a 
     moving target; new and modified provisions of the bill are 
     expected to be released in the coming days.

  If they are, it is going to be a result of the give-and-take 
compromise that leads to legislation that is going on now. But I wish 
to respond to the idea that this came out of nowhere.
  This bill has been a long time in coming. As a matter of fact, I went 
back and looked at the records. I attended my first hearing on 
cybersecurity as a member of the former Senate Governmental Affairs 
Committee--the predecessor to the current Homeland Security 
Governmental Affairs Committee--under the leadership of then-Chairman 
Fred Thompson. That was back in 1998, 14 years ago. I have been 
concerned ever since about the growing threat of cyber attack.
  Along with my dear friend and colleague on the committee, Senator 
Collins, our committee has held multiple hearings on cybersecurity; 
that is, the new Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, 
and we weren't alone. There have been numerous hearings over the past 
several years and markups by multiple committees in both the Senate--
many held by our colleagues Senator Rockefeller and Senator Feinstein 
in the Commerce and Senate Intel Committees--as well as in the House. 
Those deliberations and discussions were informed by numerous 
government and private sector studies on the dangers that lurk in 
cyberspace.
  So this bill didn't come out of nowhere. We reported a bill out of 
our committee, with a lot of hearings and an open markup. We began, at 
the majority leader's direction, to negotiate with the other 
committees, particularly Commerce and Intel. We reached agreement, 
which is essentially what this bill is.
  Incidentally, we then altered this bill--Senators Collins, Feinstein, 
Rockefeller, and I, in response to the bipartisan Kyl-Whitehouse group 
recommendations--to make it nonmandatory but still significant. So this 
bill has been aired and worked on and is ready for action.
  But more to the point, the Senate needs to act. That is why it is so 
important we adopt the motion to proceed, because this threat is real, 
dangerous, and growing every day.
  Third, this bill, S. 3414, is the result of bipartisan compromise. It 
is both bipartisan and it is the result of compromise. We cosponsors, 
as I mentioned, gave up some elements we thought were important that we 
had in our original bill. Given the cyber threat, we actually thought 
it was more important to move forward with a bill that will 
significantly strengthen our cybersecurity, even though it doesn't do 
everything we want it to do and thought should be done.
  We didn't want to lose the chance to pass cyber legislation this year 
that could prevent a cyber 9/11 attack against the United States before 
it happens, instead of rushing in the midst of mayhem back to the 
Senate and House to adopt cybersecurity legislation after we suffer a 
major attack.
  As I said, we have incorporated ideas from Senators Whitehouse, Kyl, 
and the other Members whom we were working with quite diligently to 
help us find common ground. I wish to explicitly and enthusiastically 
thank them for their efforts.
  We have heard and responded to Senators Durbin, Franken, Wyden, and 
others, and advocacy groups across the political spectrum from left to 
right, who have pressed for greater protections for privacy, personal 
privacy in this bill. We have made substantial changes designed to 
address concerns from stakeholders and colleagues.
  I am confident we can work through more issues as we debate the bill 
on the floor. But the main point here, if I may use quite a familiar 
expression around here with a slightly unique follow-on phrase, I hope: 
If in our quest for cybersecurity legislation we allow the perfect to 
be the enemy of the good, we are going to end up allowing our enemies 
to destroy a lot that is good in the United States of America. We have 
to act together for the good of the Nation, get the debate started and 
bring amendments to the floor for an up-or-down vote.
  Let me stress at this point that Senator Reid, the majority leader, 
has been quite clear that his desire, his intention is to have the 
process be an open amendment process so long as the amendments are 
germane and relevant to the topic of the bill, cybersecurity, not just 
open to any amendment about any subject.
  I want to go back over these three points and talk about them in a 
bit more detail. Let me start with the reality of the threat. I want to 
read from a letter sent to us recently by some of our Nation's most 
experienced security leaders from both Republican and Democratic 
administrations. Here is a letter to the majority and minority leader, 
signed by former Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security 
Michael Chertoff; former Bush administration Director of National 
Intelligence ADM Mike McConnell; former Bush Deputy Defense Secretary 
Paul Wolfowitz; former NSA and CIA Director General Michael Hayden; 
former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Jim 
Cartwright; and former Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn. I quote 
from the letter. It

[[Page S5428]]

is quite an impressive group, clearly bipartisan--nonpartisan.

       We write to urge you to bring cybersecurity legislation to 
     the floor as soon as possible. Given the time left in this 
     legislative session and the upcoming election this fall, we 
     are concerned that the window of opportunity to pass 
     legislation that is in our view critically necessary to 
     protect our national and economic security is quickly 
     disappearing.

  These security leaders went on to say:

       Infrastructure that controls our electricity, water and 
     sewer, nuclear plants, communications backbone, energy 
     pipelines and financial networks must be required to meet 
     appropriate cybersecurity standards. We carry the burden of 
     knowing--

  It is really chilling.

       We carry the burden of knowing that 9/11 might have been 
     averted with the intelligence that existed at the time. We do 
     not want to be in the same position again when ``cyber 9/11'' 
     hits--it is not a question of whether it will happen--but 
     when.

  That is not a statement from a Member of the Senate or an advocate on 
one side or the other. These are proven national security leaders who 
have worked in administrations of both political parties. ``It is not a 
question of whether a cyberattack will happen,'' they say, ``but 
when.''
  Many others have issued similar warnings. Secretary of Defense 
Panetta has said the next Pearl Harbor-like attack against America will 
be launched from cyberspace.
  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey has warned: 
``A cyberattack could stop our society in its tracks.''
  Just this month, National Security Agency Cybercommand Chief Gen. 
Keith Alexander blamed cyber attacks for: ``The greatest transfer of 
wealth in history.''
  General Alexander estimated that American companies lose about $250 
billion a year through intellectual property theft through cyberspace; 
$114 billion to theft through cyber crime; and another $224 billion in 
downtime the thefts caused.
  We talk a lot here in the Senate these days, as we must, about how we 
protect American jobs. It turns out that in creating more cybersecurity 
in our country we are also going to protect tens of thousands of jobs 
which otherwise are going to end up elsewhere in the world because they 
will have stolen the industrial secrets that lead to the new industries 
that create those jobs.
  General Alexander concluded this part of the statement he made by 
saying: `` . . . this is our future disappearing before us.''
  Cyber attack.
  These fears are not speculative. Let me go through a recent op-ed in 
the Wall Street Journal that President Obama wrote.

       In a future conflict, an adversary unable to match our 
     military supremacy on the battlefield might seek to exploit 
     our computer vulnerabilities here at home. Taking down vital 
     banking systems could trigger a financial crisis. The lack of 
     clean water or functioning hospitals could spark a public 
     health emergency. And as we have seen in past blackouts--

  Which were caused by natural disasters, for instance--

     the loss of electricity can bring businesses, cities and 
     entire regions to a standstill.

  These fears are not speculative. They are not theoretical. They are 
based on existing facts and existing vulnerabilities. Consider, if you 
will, this recent story in the Washington Post that detailed how a 
young man living an ocean away used his computer to hack into the 
control panel of a small town water utility in Texas. It took him just 
10 minutes and required no special tools or training. The utility had 
no idea of what had happened until the hacker posted screen shots of 
his exploit online as a warning of how vulnerable all of us are. 
Imagine if terrorists decided to target a string of small utilities 
across the United States and either cut off fresh water or dumped raw 
sewage into our lakes, rivers, and streams. We would have an 
environmental and economic disaster on our hands. But this is a real 
possibility.
  This brings me to my second point. We need to act and act now. The 
challenge of cybersecurity has been studied for a long time and there 
is no need for more studies or hearings or delay, as the Chamber letter 
requests. I went back to the Congressional Research Service. According 
to a report that they issued, in the 112th Congress alone there have 
been 38 hearings and 4 markups in the House and 33 hearings in the 
Senate on cybersecurity.
  In the 112th Congress, the Judiciary Committee also held a markup on 
the Personal Data and Privacy Security Act and in previous Congresses 
the Senate has held markups on cybersecurity legislation in five 
separate committees under regular order, all of which is included in 
the bill that is pending before us today.

  Since 2005, the Senate Homeland Security Committee alone has held 10 
hearings with 48 witnesses testifying and took questions over a total 
of 18 hours. Look at the bill's cosponsors. S. 3414: Senators Collins 
and I, along with Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller, have held 
numerous hearings, forums, and cybersecurity demonstrations for Members 
and staff. All these hearings and briefings were further informed by, 
according to the CRS, a total of 60 governmental reports totaling 2,624 
pages produced by the GAO, the Department of Defense, the OMB, the 
Department of Energy, and other Federal agencies. This doesn't count 
the many more reports from the private sector--computer security firms 
such as SEMANTEC and think tanks and academic institutions such as MIT 
and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
  This matter is ready for action. I go back to a 1936 book Winston 
Churchill wrote, ``When England Slept.'' Not ``Why England Slept'' but 
``When England Slept'' . He asked his colleagues in the Parliament who 
were refusing at that time to act decisively to counter the rise of 
German military power despite its clear threat to Europe--Churchill 
said: ``What will you know in a few weeks about this matter that you do 
not know now . . . and have been not been told any time in the last six 
months?''
  I think the same can be said now. That is why I think it is so 
important to adopt the motion to proceed and get something done before 
we leave Washington for the August break.
  Finally, in the interest of moving forward, my cosponsors and I, as I 
indicated earlier, have made a major compromise in the bill we are 
bringing to the floor in terms of how we deal with critical cyber 
infrastructure. Here again, we are talking not about small businesses 
around America, we are talking about powerplants, energy pipelines, 
water systems, financial systems that we all depend on for our banking, 
water--sewer systems, for instance--that if sabotaged or commandeered 
in a cyber attack could lead to catastrophic deaths and economic and 
environmental losses.
  In our original bill, Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, and I 
called for mandatory cyber safety standards for all critical 
infrastructure after those standards were developed in consultation 
with the private sector. We did not think this was a unique or onerous 
requirement but our responsibility in carrying out our constitutional 
oath to provide for the common defense. Since antiquity, as a matter of 
fact long before the American Constitution, societies have chosen to 
adopt safety standards to protect their citizens, particularly safety 
standards for physical structures starting with the homes we live in, 
but also our offices, factories, and critical infrastructure such as 
powerplants and dams. Today we call these building codes. Can you 
imagine if there were no building codes, the danger that people would 
take when they walked in our office buildings or factories or apartment 
houses or residences?
  I cannot resist saying these building codes in some sense are as old 
as the Bible. Here I go to Deuteronomy 22:8 which says:

       When you build a new house, you shall build a parapet for 
     your roof, so you shall not bring the guilt of blood upon 
     your house if anyone should fall from it.

  There is direct relevance in a very different context from the 
Biblical context to what we are trying to do here, which is to build a 
kind of parapet around our cyber systems so we do not bring the guilt 
of blood on us because somebody has attacked through those cyber 
systems.
  The reason we have done this over antiquity in the physical world is 
obvious. If one of our homes catches fire because of the wiring not up 
to code or it happens in an apartment building or an

[[Page S5429]]

office building, the people in it are endangered, obviously, but also 
the lives and homes of our neighbors, the community are in danger as 
well. Numerous bipartisan national security experts have been in total 
agreement that mandatory requirements are needed to protect our 
national and economic security from the ever-rising risk of cyber 
attacks.
  But it was this provision, seen in the context of regulation of 
business while we were seeing it as homeland security, protecting 
homeland security, that was the most controversial in our compromise 
bill and drew the most criticism. To be more specific about it, it 
threatened to prevent passage of any cybersecurity legislation this 
year which, for the sponsors of this bill, was simply an unacceptable 
result.
  Following the rule that no matter how deeply one believes in the 
rightness of a provision in a bill, we agreed to change it because 
there is so much else that is critically important in our bill that 
will protect America's cybersecurity. So we withdrew the mandatory 
provision and created all the standards for performance of how the most 
critical infrastructure, cyber structure, would protect itself. But 
then we left it voluntary; however, we did create some incentives. Let 
me be clear that the decision is to be what we all want it to be, which 
is as a result of a collaborative, cooperative effort that businesses 
that operate the most critical cyber structure, such as, electrical 
systems, water systems, transportation, finance, communications, will 
want to comply.

  Under our revised bill, private industry, which incidentally owns as 
much as 85 percent of the Nation's critical infrastructure--that is the 
American way, and that is great. But when that 80 to 85 percent of our 
critical infrastructure can well and probably will be the target of not 
just theft but attacks by enemies of the United States, we have to work 
together to prevent that.
  In our bill we give the private sector the opportunity to develop a 
set of cybersecurity practices which will then be reviewed by the new 
National Cybersecurity Council that our bill creates. It will be 
chaired by the Secretary of Homeland Security and made up of 
representatives of the Department of Defense, Commerce, Justice, and 
the intelligence community, and presumably the Director of National 
Intelligence. This National Cybersecurity Council will review the 
standards agreed upon by the private sector and decide whether they are 
adequate to provide the necessary level of cybersecurity for the 
American people.
  Owners of critical infrastructure will then have a decision to make. 
Do they want to essentially opt into the system or do they want to not 
do so? That is up to them under the bill as is put before them because 
it is voluntary. If they opt in--and this is what we hope will be an 
incentive--they will be entitled to receive some benefits, the most 
significant of which will be immunity from certain forms of liability 
in case of a cyber attack. We also offer expedited security clearances 
and prioritize technical assistance from our government on cyber 
questions from those critical covered cyber-infrastructure companies 
that opt into the system.
  I think our colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, has a 
very good metaphor for what we are trying to do. As he said, we are 
trying to build Fort Cybersecurity where we essentially become part of 
a system that provides greatly enhanced protection from cyber attack 
and cyber theft, but we are not compelling anybody to come into Fort 
Cybersecurity. We are encouraging them to do so, and we are giving them 
some incentives to do so. Of course, we hope that sound and wise 
administrators of those companies and forces of the marketplace will 
encourage them to make a decision to come into Fort Cybersecurity.
  Finally, our bill contains information-sharing provisions, which I 
think most people who have looked at the threat of cyber attack and 
cyber theft think are very important. These provisions will allow the 
private sector and government to share threat information between each 
other and among themselves. In other words, one private company can 
share information about an attack with another private company to see 
if the attack is part of a broader pattern.
  For instance, they can talk about where it may be coming from to 
raise their cyber defenses against it, and to do so without fear of--
well, for instance, any trust action by the State or Federal 
Government. Also, very often companies that believe they have been a 
victim of cyber attack will go to the Federal Government, the 
Department of Homeland Security, or the National Security 
Administration for help; however, a lot of them don't. Part of the 
reason for that is they fear, among other things, they may compromise 
the privacy of their records. Others, quite frankly, don't want to 
admit they have been attacked. This is a real problem. I will come back 
to that in just a moment.
  We give protection from liability for companies that share their 
information with the government. Yet there were many individual 
Senators and many people from outside groups who are focused on privacy 
who were concerned that in doing this we were opening up a method by 
which parts of our Federal Government could basically violate privacy 
restrictions, take personal information off of the information shared 
by a private company with the government, and they be the victim of 
some kind of public intrusion or even law enforcement.
  So I think we negotiated a good series of agreements on this which, 
one, will ensure that companies who share cybersecurity information 
with the government give it directly to civilian agencies and not to 
military agencies. That was a concern people had.
  Second, we ensure that information shared under the program be 
reasonably necessary and described as a cybersecurity threat. In other 
words, not just wantonly share it because some of this is private 
information.
  Third, we restrict the government's use of information it receives 
under the cyber information-sharing authority so that it can be used 
only for actual cybersecurity purposes and to prosecute cyber crimes 
with two exceptions broadly agreed on: One is that the information can 
be used to protect people from imminent threat of death or physical 
harm; and, two, to protect children from serious threats of one sort or 
another.
  Next, we would require annual reports from the Justice Department, 
Homeland Security, the defense and intelligence community, and 
inspectors general to describe what information has been received in 
the previous year, such as, who got it and what was done with it. 
Finally, we allow individuals to sue our government if the government 
intentionally or willfully violates the law; that is to say, the law 
relating to these privacy protections.
  I am very pleased by these changes we made. I want to say this loudly 
and clearly: This bill is about cybersecurity. But in trying to elevate 
our cybersecurity, we didn't want to compromise people's privacy or 
their freedom. So what I have just read was intended to assure that 
this bill, as best we could, would not compromise privacy or freedom 
rights.
  Then I took this set of compromises to the most important people in 
our government who are focused on cybersecurity--the Department of 
Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the FBI--and they all 
said, I am pleased to say, these privacy protections will not inhibit 
their ability to protect America's cybersecurity. They can live with 
these without the slightest diminishing of their focus, which 
understandably is not privacy but it is cybersecurity. They said these 
amendments to our original bill don't inhibit what they are doing.
  I conclude by, again, urging my colleagues to vote, presumably today, 
yes on the motion to proceed so we can get the debate started, so we 
can continue to work to achieve common ground and a meeting of the 
minds and enact this piece of crucial national and economic and 
security legislation in this session of Congress.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I have listened to the distinguished 
Senator and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and the 
presentation of the bill that I assume will be voted on today. I 
appreciate very much that we have had the meetings. There are really 
two bills that have been introduced: the Lieberman-Collins, bill with 
their cosponsors, and then I have introduced legislation called the 
SECURE

[[Page S5430]]

IT Act along with Senators McCain, Chambliss, Grassley, Murkowski, 
Coats, Johnson, and Burr. These are eight ranking members of committees 
and subcommittees who have jurisdiction over cybersecurity, and we 
differ in a major way from the bill that is before us that is 
cosponsored by the Chair and ranking member of the Homeland Security 
Committee. All the other ranking members of the committees that have 
jurisdiction, are in disagreement with their approach.
  Now, the good news is we have been meeting to try to begin to work 
out the differences and see if we can move forward. Our bill, the 
SECURE IT bill, will be introduced as an amendment in the nature of a 
substitute if, in fact, we take up the bill today.
  I would agree with what Senator Lieberman said right off the bat in 
that I believe, as long as we have an open amendment process, we will 
vote to move to the bill. I don't think anyone in our group or anyone 
with whom I have talked wants to hold up dealing with cybersecurity. We 
know America's systems could be under threat, and some have been hacked 
into already. There are terrorists who seek to sabotage networks. There 
are people who want access to proprietary information and intellectual 
property. We need to protect our systems and our country against those 
attacks, which is why as long as we have an amendment process and we 
are not shut out from discussing this, we will vote to move forward to 
the bill.
  This bill was not marked up in committee. It did have a lot of 
hearings in committee. Since it wasn't marked up, amendments were not 
able to be introduced and discussed and voted on, which makes it 
harder, as we all know, when we come to the floor with a bill where 
there are major disagreements. We have not had the capability for the 
committee to take up the amendments and vote on them. That is why I 
think we need to have the open amendment process and why we do want to 
move forward on the good faith that it will be open.
  Now, our bill, the SECURE IT Act, is centered on consensus items. It 
sets aside the controversial provisions that are of questionable need, 
and it is also one that we believe we can work with the House on to 
pass and send to the President. The bill we have would greatly improve 
information sharing to and from and with the government with other 
private sector industries in the same field, and we think that is the 
most important step we could all take on a fairly quick basis to start 
the process of getting more security throughout our systems.
  We must also ensure that the entities and government and industry 
share information back and forth. It has to be a two-way street. 
Obviously, if an industry is going to share information about potential 
threats, if they see risks or they see problems in a system, it must 
get information from the government agencies that are doing the 
intelligence gathering on a quick basis.
  Our bill also dramatically improves cybersecurity for Federal 
agencies themselves. It does update the rules that govern 
cybersecurity, and it requires any government contractor to inform 
their agency clients if their clients' systems are under a significant 
risk or attack. We think that is reasonable as a part of a government 
contracting requirement.
  Today antitrust laws and liability concerns inhibit private companies 
from exchanging the information that is necessary to defend against and 
respond to cyber threats. If a company is going to be encouraged to 
share information with a competitor about cyber threats, they have to 
know they are not going to be then hit with an antitrust lawsuit. I 
think that is pretty clear. So our bill does address that. We make it 
very clear there are antitrust immunities as well as most certainly 
immunity from a lawsuit if they provide information on a voluntary 
basis. If they are sued, and they have acted in accordance with our 
bill, then they would have protection from liability for a lawsuit on 
cyber attack. So those are the things we do that I think will open up 
the information sharing, which is the way we believe it is important as 
the next step.

  It is also very important that we have the safeguards for privacy. I 
do believe the underlying bill certainly protects privacy, and so does 
our substitute. We have safeguards that protect the privacy and civil 
liberties of all Americans while we preserve the right to ensure that 
we try to protect America in general from attack from the outside.
  We also in our bill improve the security of Federal information 
systems and facilitate the prosecution of cyber crime. We want to beef 
up protections against criminals who are hacking in, as well as 
potential terrorists who might, in order to be able to prosecute 
against cyber crime as a disincentive to break the law.
  Finally, our legislation has broad industry support. The businesses 
in the private sector that know their systems best and that fight every 
day to protect their systems and networks believe SECURE IT is the best 
way to go. We believe that with the cooperation of the business 
community, without having a big regulatory morass, is the way we are 
going to get the most cooperation from the people who are running the 
networks and systems.
  I have letters of endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the 
National Association of Manufacturers, the American Fuel and 
Petrochemical Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. 
Telecom, National Retail Federation, the Internet Security Alliance, 
and I ask unanimous consent that these letters be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                        Chamber of Commerce of the


                                     United States of America,

                                    Washington, DC, June 29, 2012.
     Hon. John McCain,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
        Dear Senators McCain and Hutchison: The U.S. Chamber of 
     Commerce, the world's largest business federation 
     representing the interests of more than three million 
     businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and 
     region, supports S. 3342, the ``SECURE IT Act of 2012.'' This 
     bill would dramatically help the United States improve its 
     cybersecurity posture and serve as a catalyst for greater 
     sharing of targeted cyber threat information between the 
     government and the private sector.
       The Chamber agrees that the right path forward is for the 
     public and private sectors to work together in solving mutual 
     challenges, increasing real-time cyber threat information 
     sharing between and among the public and private sectors, and 
     fostering the development and deployment of innovative 
     cybersecurity technologies. This path provides the best 
     opportunity of staying ahead of fast-paced cyber threats.
       The Chamber also agrees that Congress should not layer 
     additional cybersecurity regulations on the business 
     community. New compliance mandates would automatically drive 
     up costs and misallocate business resources in a tough 
     economy without necessarily increasing security. Critical 
     infrastructure owners and operators already devote 
     significant resources toward protecting and making their 
     information systems more resilient because it is in their 
     overwhelming interest to do so and good for the country.
       Another positive aspect of S. 3342 is that it would 
     leverage existing information-sharing and analysis 
     organizations and incorporate lessons learned from pilot 
     programs undertaken by critical infrastructure sectors. Both 
     offer complementary, demonstrated models to enable the 
     government to share cyber threat information with the private 
     sector in a trusted, constructive, and actionable manner 
     without creating burdensome regulatory mandates or new 
     bureaucracies.
       S. 3342 would also provide businesses the much-needed 
     certainty that threat and vulnerability information shared 
     with the government would be provided safe harbor and not 
     lead to frivolous lawsuits, would be exempt from public 
     disclosure, and would not be used by officials to regulate 
     other activities. The Chamber welcomes your efforts to make 
     certain that the information-sharing processes in your bill 
     include necessary privacy and civil liberties protections, 
     such as tightening the definition of cyber threat 
     information.
       The Chamber appreciates your efforts to address an array of 
     industry concerns. As the SECURE IT Act progresses, we look 
     forward to working with you to tailor the scope of 
     information that certain entities in the private sector could 
     be required to provide a government agency or department 
     under statute.
       Equally, we want to ensure that government entities 
     continue to acquire the most innovative and secure technology 
     products and services under provisions of S. 3342 related to 
     reforming the Federal Information Security Management Act. 
     Federal officials who manage agencies' information security 
     programs should leverage industry-led, globally accepted 
     standards for security assurance during the acquisition 
     process. Added language stipulating that the bill would not 
     convey any new regulatory authority to agencies or 
     departments is a step in the right direction.

[[Page S5431]]

       The Chamber believes that your bill highlights the notion 
     that Congress should focus on enacting legislation that would 
     truly improve the sharing of actionable and targeted 
     information between public and private entities in order to 
     defeat our mutual adversaries--not layering additional 
     regulations on the business community. We appreciate your 
     commitment to a nonregulatory approach to bolstering 
     collective security; it is one that the Chamber strongly 
     supports.
           Sincerely,
     R. Bruce Josten.
                                  ____

                                           National Association of


                                                Manufacturers,

                                   Washington, DC, March 26, 2012.
     Hon. John McCain,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington DC.
       Dear Senator McCain and Senator Hutchison: On behalf of the 
     12,000 members of the National Association of Manufacturers 
     (NAM), the largest manufacturing association in the United 
     States representing manufacturers in every industrial sector 
     and in all 50 states, I am writing to express the NAM's 
     support for S. 2151, the Strengthening and Enhancing 
     Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information, and 
     Technology Act or ``SECURE IT'' Act.
       Manufacturers through their comprehensive and connected 
     relationships with customers, vendors, suppliers, and 
     governments are entrusted with vast amounts of data. They 
     hold the responsibility of securing this data, the networks 
     on which it runs, and the facilities and machinery they 
     control at the highest priority level. Manufacturers know the 
     economic security of the United States is directly related to 
     our cybersecurity.
       The NAM supports the government sharing timely and 
     actionable threat and vulnerability information with the 
     private sector. We also support the creation of a voluntary 
     framework that allows companies to share information with the 
     government and with each other without creating new 
     liabilities.
       NAM member companies also support allowing the private 
     sector to continue developing appropriate general and 
     industry-specific best practices in collaboration with the 
     Federal government for improved security. Encouraging 
     manufacturers to adopt industry-standard best practices 
     through incentives is the best way to ensure innovation while 
     addressing the evolving threats to our nation's security. In 
     contrast, mandates on the use of specific technologies or 
     standards and imposing a prescriptive regulatory framework 
     would unduly inhibit innovation.
       The SECURE IT Act addresses these issues important to 
     manufacturers. The bill would allow for voluntary information 
     sharing across the cyber community and protect information 
     owners from liability stemming from those actions. It would 
     also help secure government networks, increase the penalties 
     for cybercrime, and prioritize cybersecurity research using 
     existing government dollars. The SECURE IT Act does this 
     without creating a new and unnecessary regulatory burden on 
     manufacturers.
       The NAM and all manufacturers remain intensely committed to 
     working with Congress to secure our cyberinfrastructure from 
     harm. We look forward to thoughtful discussions and 
     examination by all the Committees with jurisdiction on this 
     issue to ensure that any legislation that moves forward 
     mitigates the cyber threat facing our nation.
           Sincerely,
                                                 Brian J. Raymond,
     Director, Technology Policy.
                                  ____

                                     American Fuel & Petrochemical


                                                Manufacturers,

                                   Washington, DC, March 13, 2012.
     Re AFPM supports the Strengthening and Enhancing 
         Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information, 
         and Technology (SECURE IT) Act.

     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Senate Majority Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Senate Republican Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Reid and McConnell: AFPM, the American Fuel 
     and Petrochemical Manufacturers (formerly National 
     Petrochemical & Refiners Association), writes today to 
     express its support for S. 2151, the ``Strengthening and 
     Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, 
     Information, and Technology (SECURE IT) Act of 2012 '' 
     introduced by Senators McCain, Hutchison, Grassley, 
     Chambliss, Murkowski, and Coats. This important legislation 
     breaks down current barriers to information sharing to ensure 
     greater security without interfering in the ability of 
     private-sector businesses to protect their own IT systems.
       AFPM is a trade association representing high-tech American 
     manufacturers of virtually the entire U.S. supply of 
     gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, other fuels and home heating oil, 
     as well as the petrochemicals used as building blocks for 
     thousands of products vital to everyday life. Protection of 
     our members' Information Technology (IT) and Industrial 
     Control Systems (ICS) are critical to the fuel and 
     petrochemical manufacturing process.
       The SECURE IT Act opens avenues to foster greater 
     information sharing between the private sector, non-federal 
     government agencies, and Federal cybersecurity centers, 
     allowing private companies to voluntarily share information 
     without concern of antitrust and liability violations. 
     Instead of creating a massive regulatory regime under the 
     Department of Homeland Security, this legislation recognizes 
     the proactive role the refining and petrochemical industries 
     have taken to protect our facilities. The sharing of 
     information among companies, as well as with the federal 
     government, will improve our preparedness for an attack and 
     better educate our companies' employees on the various 
     threats facing all critical infrastructures.
       AFPM's members remain concerned over alternative approaches 
     to cybersecurity that would create an environment focused 
     simply of compliance with bureaucratic government regulation, 
     rather than on actual security. Because cyber threats and 
     crimes are always changing, establishing a one size fits all 
     regulatory framework for our facilities could create more 
     vulnerabilities and has the potential to make existing 
     cybersecurity protections significantly less effective.
       Cybersecurity is critical to protecting refineries and 
     petrochemical facilities. Breaking down the barriers to 
     information sharing will ensure our security and provide our 
     facilities with timely information to better protect our 
     systems against attack. AFPM believes that the SECURE IT Act 
     will make America and its IT and ICS systems more secure and 
     urges your support for this legislation.
           Sincerely,
                                                Charles T. Drevna,
     President, AFPM.
                                  ____



                                                          API,

                                    Washington, DC, March 7, 2012.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Senate Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Senate Republican Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Reid and McConnell: We are writing to express 
     our support for S. 2151 ``SECURE IT Act of 2012'', which was 
     recently introduced by Senators McCain, Hutchison, Chambliss, 
     Grassley, Murkowski, Coats, Burr and Ron Johnson. The 
     American Petroleum Institute is the national trade 
     organization representing nearly 500 companies involved in 
     all aspects of the domestic oil and natural gas industry.
       We appreciate the balanced and carefully crafted approach 
     taken in S 2151, using and improving upon sector-based 
     cybersecurity processes and partnerships already in progress, 
     and working toward increased collaboration between government 
     and industry rather than imposing additional and unworkable 
     regulations. For example, the sharing of timely and 
     actionable information on cyber threats, vulnerabilities and 
     mitigation procedures will help companies improve their 
     detection, prevention, mitigation and response capabilities. 
     Continuing to improve valuable information sharing, both 
     between a company and the government and among companies 
     within industry sectors, is an effective tool in advancing 
     our nation's cybersecurity.
       We remain concerned that alternative legislative approaches 
     under consideration could have unintended consequences on 
     business and industry, including the diversion of resources 
     away from activities that will reduce or mitigate risks 
     associated with daily cyber threats in order to comply with 
     mandates that would soon be outdated.
       Cyber threats change rapidly. API believes the proposed 
     path to improved information sharing will encourage the 
     public and private sectors to work together to reduce risk 
     and promote investment in new technologies to keep industry 
     cyber systems secure. Legislation must enhance, rather than 
     impede, innovative processes and encourage advancements in 
     new cyber risk assessment and mitigation measures.
       API recognizes the leadership of the ``SECURE IT Act'' 
     sponsors in addressing our nation's cyber security 
     challenges. We appreciate the continued commitment to offer 
     valuable solutions on this complex issue and look forward to 
     working together in the days and weeks ahead.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Marty Durbin,
     Executive Vice President.
                                  ____



                                   National Retail Federation,

                                    Washington, DC, June 27, 2012.
     Hon. John S. McCain,
     U.S. Senate, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator McCain: The National Retail Federation 
     strongly supports your efforts to craft effective 
     cybersecurity legislation to protect our nation's critical 
     infrastructure from cyber-attacks and we appreciate and 
     applaud your introduction today, June 27, of S. 3342, the 
     Strengthening and Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, 
     Education, Information, and Technology Act of 2012 (the 
     ``SECURE IT Act''). In your efforts to develop a bipartisan 
     bill for Senate floor consideration, we urge you and your 
     cosponsors to ensure that all provisions of the bill support 
     the overall purpose of protecting our critical infrastructure 
     and are not expanded to include unrelated or unvetted 
     amendments, such as data breach and commercial privacy 
     legislation.

[[Page S5432]]

       As the world's largest retail trade association and the 
     voice of retail worldwide, NRF represents retailers of all 
     types and sizes, including chain restaurants and industry 
     partners, from the United States and more than 45 countries 
     abroad. Retailers operate more than 3.6 million U.S. 
     establishments that support one in four U.S. jobs--42 million 
     working Americans. Contributing $2.5 trillion to annual GDP, 
     retail is a daily barometer for the nation's economy. NRF's 
     Retail Means Jobs campaign emphasizes the economic importance 
     of retail and encourages policymakers to support a Jobs, 
     Innovation and Consumer Value Agenda aimed at boosting 
     economic growth and job creation.
       The SECURE IT Act advances the important goal of 
     facilitating cooperative information sharing about cyber 
     threats between the government and private sector, a key 
     component of cybersecurity legislation we support. The goals 
     underlying cybersecurity legislation and provisions in data 
     breach notification legislation are fundamentally 
     contradictory. The cybersecurity proposals encourage 
     information sharing by limiting companies' liability for that 
     sharing. On the other hand, some proposed breach notification 
     bills either penalize companies for sharing news of a breach, 
     by imposing onerous credit monitoring obligations, or impose 
     lesser civil penalties for failing to disclose a breach in 
     the first instance. Juxtaposing these contrasting proposals 
     would place businesses in a precarious position when their 
     systems are attacked by cyber criminals. Thoughtful 
     examination and comparison of the SECURE IT Act with proposed 
     data breach legislation reveal that they are not properly 
     aligned.
       A similar case exists with respect to commercial privacy 
     legislation called for by the Obama Administration in its 
     Privacy and Innovation Blueprint and by the Federal Trade 
     Commission in its final privacy report. Comprehensive 
     consumer privacy legislation, which has not been vetted by 
     any committees of jurisdiction in the Senate, attached to the 
     SECURE IT Act, flies in the face of the deliberative process 
     that this sensitive topic deserves.
       Congress must strike the careful balance between consumers' 
     privacy interests and the provision of goods and services 
     over the Internet that the average American consumer expects 
     in this e-commerce economy. That type of careful 
     deliberation, we fear, may not take place on the Senate floor 
     at this time. Furthermore, these commercial privacy 
     provisions are unrelated to the core purposes of 
     cybersecurity legislation, and Congress has ample time to 
     fully consider the positions and concerns of all stakeholders 
     in a separate and unrushed legislative process.
       NRF is supportive of your efforts to create a cybersecurity 
     bill that is based on fully vetted concepts that will aid in 
     protecting our nation's most critical infrastructure but that 
     is not encumbered with conflicting amendments addressing data 
     breach notification or insufficiently examined new privacy 
     regimes. NRF looks forward to working with you on this 
     legislation moving forward.
           Sincerely,
                                                     David French,
                      Senior Vice President, Government Relations.

  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, our bill also allows for a true 
collaborative effort.
  The reason we are not supporting the bill that is on the floor today 
is because we believe it does not do the priorities that we can pass, 
and it does increase the mandates and the regulatory overkill, in our 
opinion, that will keep our companies from being able to move forward 
on an expedited basis to start protecting our systems.
  A priority of mine throughout this process has been that we help the 
private sector combat cyber attacks by breaking down the barriers to 
sharing information. If we could take that one step, we would be a long 
way toward ensuring that we are increasing the security of all 
Americans. The bill before us will actually undermine current 
information sharing between the government and the private sector. That 
bill's information-sharing title is a step backward because it slows 
the transfer of critical information to our intelligence agencies, and 
there is not sufficient protection from antitrust. In addition, there 
is no consensus in the Senate to grant the Department of Homeland 
Security broad new authority to impose burdensome regulations on the 
private sector.
  While I am pleased our colleagues who are cosponsoring the bill that 
is before us have made an effort to move away from direct regulation of 
our Nation's systems, it has a long way to go. While their bill allows 
the private sector to propose standards that are described as 
voluntary, the bill actually empowers Federal agencies to make these 
voluntary standards mandatory. If an agency does not make the standards 
mandatory, it would have to report to Congress why it had failed to do 
so. That is a pretty big incentive for mandates to start being put on 
with regulations that will be required.
  I believe there is a way forward. If the Senate takes the well-
reasoned and broadly supported provisions of the SECURE IT bill and 
puts them with a voluntary and industry-driven critical infrastructure 
protection title, we could pass a Senate bill with overwhelming 
support.
  The key to reaching consensus has five parts:
  The cybersecurity standards must be developed by the private sector 
and must be truly voluntary. The relationship between government and 
the private sector in this area must be cooperative, not adversarial 
and not regulatory.
  The National Institute for Standards and Technology should be the 
convening authority for the private sector standard-setting process. 
The government can have a role in ensuring the standards are 
sufficient, and it should, but it can't establish a regulatory regime 
that will lengthen and hamper the efforts to open information sharing.
  Companies--and here is the incentive for the companies to do exactly 
what we are asking them to do--companies that adopt the voluntary 
standards must receive robust and straightforward protections from 
liability as well as necessary antitrust and Freedom of Information Act 
exemptions. If a company is going to turn over its proprietary 
information to the government, it must be protected from freedom of 
information requests from the government that then would take its 
private proprietary information public.
  As in the SECURE IT Act, the information-sharing title must be strong 
and encourage the private sector to share information, and it must 
encourage the government to share with the private sector. It cannot 
cut out those with the most expertise in the area, meaning the national 
security agencies should not have to be subservient to the Department 
of Homeland Security.
  In addition, a 5-year sunset would allow Congress to revisit the act 
and make needed changes. FISA has certainly shown that with a sunset, 
it allows the flexibility to adapt to new issues that arise and stay 
current in its processes to deal with cybersecurity. We believe a 5-
year sunset would be the right amount of time to get this going, set 
things in place, see what works, and see what needs to be adjusted.
  I am hopeful my colleagues and I can come to a compromise on this 
critical issue. We want a strong cybersecurity bill. We want one that 
can pass both Houses. The five points I have laid out could get us to a 
bill that will significantly take the steps to improve our Nation's 
cybersecurity.
  I wish to read a couple of excerpts from the Heritage Foundation's 
views of the bill that is before us today:

       Cybersecurity legislation will likely be taken up by the 
     Senate tomorrow.

  This was written yesterday.

       Regrettably, the idea that we just need to do something 
     about cybersecurity seems to be trumping the view that we 
     need to do it right.
       The Cybersecurity Act of 2012, authored by Senators 
     Lieberman and Collins, seeks to solve our cybersecurity ills 
     but only threatens to make the situation worse.
       The ``voluntary'' nature of the CSA's standards is also 
     questionable. Any voluntary standard is one step away from 
     mandatory, and Senator Lieberman has already indicated that 
     if the standards aren't voluntarily used, he would push to 
     make them mandatory.
       Even more concerning, section 103(g) of the CSA gives 
     current regulators the power to make these ``voluntary'' 
     standards mandatory.

  It specifically authorizes that action.

       If a regulator doesn't mandate the standards, the 
     regulatory agency will have to report to Congress why it 
     didn't do so.

  Again, there is strong encouragement to just make the standards 
mandatory and avoid a congressional inquisition.
  Finally, the Heritage Foundation goes on to say:

       Finally, the sharing and analysis of cybersecurity threat 
     information was weakened by confining cybersecurity 
     information exchanges to civilian organizations. Though in an 
     ideal world the Department of Homeland Security would have 
     the capability to lead our cybersecurity efforts, it 
     currently lacks those capabilities and needs to lean on more 
     capable organizations such as the National Security Agency. 
     The recent changes, however, give DHS more responsibility 
     than it is likely able to handle.

  So we will certainly move forward with the understanding that we will

[[Page S5433]]

have the ability to offer amendments and try to make this a workable 
bill. It is certain that because the committee was not able to mark up 
the bill, we have to have the amendments to try to perfect it.
  I would very much like to take the first step forward in 
cybersecurity, which is why, assuming we have the right to amend, I 
will support going to the legislation so that we can start the 
amendment process next week. I think the people who are cosponsors of 
my legislation, along with Senator McCain, Senator Chambliss, Senator 
Grassley, Senator Burr, Senator Murkowski, Senator Coats, and Senator 
Johnson, want to make sure we do this right. As the Heritage Foundation 
has so aptly said, we don't want a big, new regulatory scheme that is 
not going to be successful in our efforts to improve the cybersecurity 
safeguards in our system.
  We are the ranking members of all but one of the relevant committees. 
We know this area. We deal with the agencies that deal with 
cybersecurity and all of the national security in our country. We know 
what can work, we know what we have a chance to pass, and we know how 
to take the first step forward without another big regulatory 
overreach, as we have seen happen in the last 3\1/2\ years in this 
administration. We hope to work with the majority, with the Lieberman-
Collins bill, and come up with something that everyone will feel is the 
right step forward. We would like to have a bill that will get a large 
number of votes rather than a very lopsided vote against it.
  I appreciate very much that we are now beginning to discuss this. I 
am appreciative that we have had several meetings with all of the sides 
that have been put forward as having concerns with the bill that is on 
the floor as well as its sponsors. I hope we can keep working toward a 
solution that will protect America and do it in the right way.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Chair. I ask unanimous consent to take 5 
minutes in morning business and then speak on the pending legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Tribute to Ambassador Ryan Crocker

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would note that I saw my friend Senator 
Lieberman on the floor a second ago, and I know he joins with me in 
this statement.
  I wish to take a few minutes to pay tribute to Ambassador Ryan 
Crocker, who ended his tour this week as the U.S. Chief of Mission in 
Kabul, Afghanistan.
  As some of my colleagues may know, Ambassador Crocker's health has 
unfortunately been poor, so he is returning to receive some much needed 
care. But what my colleagues may not know is that Ambassador Crocker's 
health has been poor for some time and the people who care about him 
most--his family, his friends and colleagues in the Foreign Service, 
and our Secretary of State herself--told Ambassador Crocker long ago 
that he needed to leave his post and that he needed to get away from 
the long days and long nights of too much stress and not enough sleep. 
They told him to come home for his own sake.
  Eventually, Ambassador Crocker relented, but still he was only going 
to leave on his own terms. He said that America asks the best of our 
country--our men and women in uniform and their many civilian partners 
who work and sacrifice shoulder to shoulder with our troops in the 
field--to serve in Afghanistan for 1 year. Ambassador Crocker said he 
would expect no less of himself, and do no less, whatever the cost. So 
for the past few months, Ambassador Crocker has fought through 
persistent pain and discomfort to finish out his 1-year in Kabul, doing 
everything that is asked of him--and more. On Tuesday, that year came 
to an end, and Ambassador Crocker came home to receive the care he 
desperately needs.

  This is a remarkable story, but it is only surprising to those who do 
not know Ryan Crocker. For those of us who have had the pleasure and 
the honor of coming to know Ryan well, this latest story is not at all 
surprising. It is actually quite in keeping with the character and the 
actions of this superb, decent, and selfless man--a man whom I would 
call, without question or hesitation, the most excellent Foreign 
Service officer and one of the finest public servants I have ever 
known.
  For the past 41 years, ever since he was a junior diplomat serving in 
prerevolution Iran, Ryan Crocker has consistently answered the call to 
serve in the most challenging, the most difficult, but also the most 
important posts in the world. They were the places, as it turned out, 
where America needed Ryan Crocker the most, and he has always served 
with distinction.
  He was a young officer in Lebanon when our Embassy was bombed, and 
Ryan Crocker helped to pull his colleagues from the rubble and then got 
back to work. He was one of the first civilians into Afghanistan and 
Iraq after the recent wars, helping to reestablish our diplomatic 
presence in both countries after decades. He returned to Iraq during 
the surge and, as General Petraeus tells everyone, was absolutely 
indispensable in turning around our war effort, even as his life was 
constantly in danger from the rockets that smashed into his office in 
Baghdad and, perhaps more threatening, his own relentless work ethic, 
which literally almost killed him.
  Many Presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, have had the wisdom 
to appoint Ryan Crocker as their Ambassador to six different 
countries--Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and finally 
Afghanistan.
  Ambassador Crocker has been just as indispensable in Kabul as he has 
everywhere else in his career, from enhancing our relationship with 
President Karzai and the people of Afghanistan, to negotiating and 
concluding the Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan, to 
being the dedicated partner every hour of every day of GEN John Allen 
and all of our men and women serving in harm's way.
  In my many years and my many travels, I have had the pleasure and 
honor of meeting and getting to know many of our career diplomats, and 
I am continually impressed by their high quality and tough-mindedness, 
their patriotism and love of their country, their constant willingness 
to serve and the many quiet sacrifices they make. But of all of these 
remarkable men and women, never have I met a Foreign Service officer 
more outstanding or more committed to our country than Ryan Crocker.
  The one comfort I take in Ryan's departure from Afghanistan is that 
he remains an abiding inspiration to his fellow diplomats, who revere 
him and hold him in the highest regard and wish to model themselves and 
their careers after his life and service. America will be a better and 
safer place because of this, thanks to Ryan Crocker.
  Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 
because it would do very little to improve our country's national 
security. In fact, in its present form, I believe the bill before us 
would do more harm to our country's economy and expand the size and 
influence of the Federal Government--specifically, the Department of 
Homeland Security--than anything else.
  But before I begin my critique of the Cybersecurity Act, I would like 
to reaffirm my sincere respect for the lead sponsor of this bill--both 
sponsors, actually, both Senators Lieberman and Collins. Although I 
disagree, whatever criticisms I may have with the legislation should 
not be interpreted as an attack on the sponsors of the bill but, 
rather, on the process by which the bill being debated today arrived 
before us and its public policy implications.
  Consider this for a moment: If we pass this bill in its present form, 
which I hope we will not, we will have handed over one of the most 
technologically complex aspects of our national security to an agency 
with an abysmal track record, the Department of Homeland Security. The 
problems at DHS are too numerous to list here today, but I think I 
speak for many when I question the logic of putting this agency in 
charge of sensitive national security matters. They cannot even screen 
airline passengers without constant controversy. And do not forget that 
this is the same outfit in charge of the Chemical Facility Anti-
Terrorism Standards Program, or CFATS, which was described in a recent 
report as ``at

[[Page S5434]]

measurable risk,'' beset by deep-seated problems such as wasteful 
spending and a largely unqualified workforce that lacks 
``professionalism.'' I for one am not willing to take such a broad leap 
of faith and entrust this complex area of our national security and so 
many vibrant parts of our economy to this ineffective, bloated 
government agency.
  The poor quality of the bill before us is a direct reflection of the 
lack of a thorough and transparent committee process. Had this bill 
been subjected to the proper process, my colleagues and I and the 
American public would have a much better understanding of the real 
implications of this undertaking. Unfortunately, this bill has not been 
the subject of one hearing, a single markup, or a whiff of regular 
legislative procedure.
  Our Nation's cybersecurity is critical, and the issue is deserving of 
the regular order and the full attention and input of every Member of 
this body. I urge the majority leader to allow a full, fair, and open 
amendment process if cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed.
  All of us should recognize the importance of cybersecurity. Time and 
again we have heard from experts about the importance of maximizing our 
Nation's ability to effectively prevent and respond to cyber threats. 
We have all listened to accounts of cyber espionage originating from 
countries such as China, organized criminals in Russia, and the depth 
of the threat from Iran in the aftermath of the Stuxnet leaks 
originating from the current administration. Unfortunately, this bill 
would do little to minimize those threats or generally improve our 
current cybersecurity posture.
  The reason for this bill's general inadequacy is that rather than 
using a liability protection framework to enter into cooperative 
relationships with the private sector, which happens to own 80 to 90 
percent of the critical cyber infrastructure in this country, this bill 
chooses to take an adversarial approach, with government mandates and 
inadequate liability protections.

  Further, this bill includes unnecessary items that our government 
cannot afford and makes no mention of what the additional programs will 
cost. For instance, I am sure some of us have fond childhood memories 
of going to or taking part in a talent show, but to include talent show 
provisions in this bill is ridiculous. Title IV of this bill authorizes 
9th to 12th grade cyber talent shows and cyber summer programs for 
kindergartners to seniors in high school--again, ridiculous, especially 
considering that the majority leader deemed this bill more important 
than the National Defense Authorization Act.
  While I have criticisms with every title of this bill, I will limit 
my comments today to title I, which regulates critical infrastructure, 
and title VII, which concerns information sharing among the government 
and the private sector. In my view, these titles, along with weighing 
how much this bill, which lacks a CBO score--we do not even know how 
much it is going to cost--will ultimately cost and how it will 
dramatically increase the size of the Federal Government, are the most 
important aspects we can discuss.
  With respect to the first title, title I, the proponents of the 
Cybersecurity Act would have you believe this bill authorizes the 
private sector to generate their own standards, that those standards 
are voluntary, and that the bill establishes a ``public-private 
partnership.'' Unfortunately, I disagree with each of those 
characterizations. As the bill is currently written, the government and 
not the private sector would have the final say on what standards look 
like and the private sector would be forced to comply. While my 
colleagues might suggest that section 103 states that the private 
sector proposes ``voluntary'' cybersecurity practices to the 
government, I call your attention to the following provision in section 
103, which states the government would then decide whether and how to 
``amend'' or ``add'' to those cybersecurity practices. Additionally, 
there is no recourse for the private sector to challenge the 
government's actions.
  Soon after the government's takeover of the development of 
cybersecurity standards, any notion of the standards being 
``voluntary'' evaporates. Section 103 clearly states: ``A Federal 
agency with responsibilities for regulating the security of critical 
infrastructure may adopt the cybersecurity practices as mandatory 
requirements.'' That is the language of the bill. What is being 
portrayed as ``voluntary'' proposals would soon become mandatory 
requirements.
  Unfortunately, the conversion from voluntary to mandatory does not 
stop there. Shockingly, under this bill, if an agency does not adopt 
mandatory cybersecurity practices, it must explain why it chose not to 
do so. That is right. Under this bill, if a regulatory agency chooses 
not to mandate the ``voluntary'' practices, it must explain itself--as 
if it must be doing something contrary to the final objective. If this 
provision does not reveal the true regulatory intent of the proponents 
of this bill, nothing does.
  Section 105 brings home this point by stating: ``Nothing in this 
title shall be construed to limit the ability of a Federal agency with 
responsibilities for regulating the security of critical infrastructure 
from requiring that the cybersecurity practices developed under section 
103 be met.'' I would very much commend my colleagues to read that 
provision of the bill. All you have to do is read it. The regulatory 
result of these standards could not be clearer.
  Moving on to title VII, which deals with the flow of information 
between the government and the private sector, the current bill is a 
step in the wrong direction. Specifically, the bill would make us less 
safe by failing to place the agencies with the most expertise and that 
are the most capable of protecting us on the same footing as other 
entities within the Federal Government. It strikes me as 
counterintuitive to prevent the institutions most capable of protecting 
the United States from a cyber attack and leave us reliant on agencies 
with far less capabilities.
  Because this bill fails to equitably incentivize the voluntary 
sharing of information with all of the Federal Government's cyber 
defense assets, it does a great disservice to our national security. In 
cyber war, where speed and reaction times are essential to success, 
real-time responses are essential. The bill language states that 
information should be shared in ``as close to real time as possible.'' 
That may sound nice, but it will not get the job done.
  We all agree that the threat we face in the cyber domain is among the 
most significant challenges of the 21st century. It is reckless and 
irresponsible to rebuild the very stovepipes and information-sharing 
barriers that the 9/11 Commission attributed as responsible for one of 
our greatest intelligence failures.
  Because of my opposition to this bill and the lack of a regular 
legislative process, I have joined with Senators Chambliss, Hutchison, 
Grassley, Murkowski, Burr, Johnson of Wisconsin, and Coats in offering 
an alternative cybersecurity bill. The fundamental difference in our 
alternative approach is that we aim to enter into a truly cooperative 
relationship with the entire private sector through voluntary 
information sharing rather than an adversarial one with the threat of 
mandates. Our bill, which also addresses reforming how the government 
protects its own assets, sets penalties for cyber crimes, refocuses 
government research toward cybersecurity, and provides a commonsense 
path forward to improve our Nation's cybersecurity defenses with no new 
spending. We believe that by improving information sharing among the 
private sector and the government, updating our Criminal Code to 
reflect the threat cyber criminals pose, reforming the Federal 
Information Security Management Act, and focusing Federal investments 
in cybersecurity, our Nation will be better able to defend itself 
against cyber attacks.
  Even though we do not offer talent shows or summer camps in our bill, 
it has the support of the industries that themselves are under attack. 
Before I close, I would like to leave with you a final point which gets 
to the heart of why we are having this debate. In our country, unlike 
other countries around the globe, the private sector owns 80 to 90 
percent of the critical cyber infrastructure.
  This is a fact in which we should all take great pride. After all, it 
speaks to the essence of American entrepreneuralism and our spirit of 
individualism. The companies that own these systems are large and 
small, they

[[Page S5435]]

employ men and women everywhere, and their influence reaches every 
State, every congressional district, and about every corner of our 
country. While we all agree we are involved in a serious national 
security discussion, we must not forget to weigh the economic realities 
of this debate too.
  I caution all my colleagues to tread very carefully because I am 
deeply concerned we are on the cusp of granting the Federal Government 
broad authorities and influence over one of the most vibrant and 
innovative sectors of our economy. The technology sector and the use of 
the Internet by American companies to innovate and improve the customer 
experience are deeply threatened by the heavy and too often clumsy hand 
of government.
  As we confront the security challenges of an innovative economy, we 
must be careful not to undermine the economy itself. It is well known 
that we continue to have discussions amongst various parties: Senator 
Kyl, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Lieberman, Senator Collins. Sometimes 
the crowd is large, sometimes it is not so large. I think we have made 
some progress. I think there is a better understanding of both of the 
different proposals that are before us. I do believe it is important, I 
do believe it is very important that businesses large and small in the 
United States of America, whether they be the utility companies or 
whether they be the most high-tech sectors, be represented in these 
discussions. We have tried to do that.
  I believe we can make progress. I believe we can reach an agreement. 
I also know we have had several meetings and have not had extremely 
measurable progress. But I am committed to doing everything I can to 
see we reach that agreement before we conclude the consideration of 
this legislation.
  I would also like to point out to my colleagues that I have had 
numerous conversations with my friends on the other side of the 
Capitol. They find this legislation in its present form unacceptable. I 
would hope we would also consider the fact that we need to get a final 
bill, not just one passed by the Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, consider these ominous words:

       To the loved ones of the victims who are here in this room 
     . . . to those who are watching on television, your 
     government failed you. Those who you entrusted with 
     protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, 
     but that doesn't matter, because we failed.

  Those are not my words. They contain a sentiment I hope none of us 
ever has to convey to the American people. Those are the words of 
Richard Clarke, the senior White House official who was in charge of 
counterterrorism efforts in the previous administration when the 
September 11 terrorist attacks occurred.
  Mr. Clarke's testimony before the 
9/11 Commission was apologetic, remorseful and tragic because he knew, 
he knew like no one else, our government had failed, failed to act on 
repeated warnings. This failure led to 9/11 and the largest loss of 
life on American soil at the hands of a foreign enemy since December 7, 
1941, at Pearl Harbor.
  Today, the national alarm security bells are ringing once again. This 
time, however, the enemy is not in a terrorist training camp learning 
how to make an explosive device or commandeer an aircraft. The enemy is 
not trying to sneak its way into the United States. The enemy we face 
does not need to hijack an airplane in order to wreck the American 
economy and to cause widespread loss of life. The only tool this enemy 
needs is a computer and access to the Internet.
  The threat our Nation faces from a cyber attack will soon equal or 
surpass the threat from any terrorism that has consumed our attention 
so much since September 11. That is not my assessment. That is the 
assessment of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 
Robert Mueller. In fact, he is not alone. There is an overwhelming 
bipartisan consensus among officials in the intelligence, defense, and 
national security community that America is incredibly vulnerable to a 
cyber attack that can be launched at any moment from anywhere in the 
world.
  Michael Hayden, the former Director of the National Security Agency, 
Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security who served 
under President George W. Bush, agreed. They and many other officials 
have joined the current Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet 
Napolitano, the current Director of the National Security Agency, GEN 
Keith Alexander, and others in warnings as follows: The cyber threat is 
imminent to America. It poses as serious a challenge to our national 
security as the introduction of nuclear weapons in the global debate 60 
years ago.
  The experts are sounding the alarm, telling us to take action now to 
prevent a catastrophic cyber attack that could cripple our Nation's 
economy, cause widespread loss of life, sadly send our economy into 
free fall. When the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 comes up for a vote, the 
Senate will have an opportunity to take action on this critical bill 
that will enhance our national security. In light of these warnings 
from the experts, the least we can do in the Senate is to vote to open 
the debate on this critically important bill.
  I wish to thank its sponsors: Senator Lieberman, the chairman of the 
subcommittee, Senator Collins, the ranking member, Senator Feinstein of 
the Intelligence Committee, Senator Rockefeller on the Commerce 
Committee. They have put a lot of time and effort into this important 
piece of legislation. They have worked together on a bipartisan basis. 
They have listened to a wide range of comments, including a few I have 
offered, and I am pleased the revised Cybersecurity Act of 2012 
incorporates many suggestions.

  It will help make America safe by enhancing our Nation's ability to 
prevent, mitigate, and rapidly respond to cyber attacks. The bill 
contains important provisions for securing our Nation's critical 
infrastructure. Every day, without thinking about it, we rely on 
powerplants, pipelines, electric power grids, water treatment 
facilities, transportation systems, and financial networks to work, to 
live, to travel, to do so many things we take for granted.
  All those critical systems are increasingly vulnerable to cyber 
attack from our enemies. Last year, there was a 400-percent increase in 
cyber attacks reported by the owners of critical infrastructure, 
according to the Department of Homeland Security. That increase does 
not even account for the many attacks that went unreported.
  We do not think twice about it, but this infrastructure is the 
backbone of America's economy and our way of life. This bill has 
provisions that will help minimize our vulnerability and shore up our 
defenses. The bill also includes a new framework for voluntary 
information sharing so government agencies and private companies can 
improve their mutual understanding of cyber threats and vulnerabilities 
and develop good practices to keep us safe.
  I thought it was worth doing a few months ago to call together a 
dozen major corporations in Chicago and across Illinois that I thought, 
with the advice of some people who were experts, might be vulnerable to 
cyber attack. I asked those experts in a closed setting, outside the 
press, what Congress could do to help them secure their infrastructure 
at their business and networks from cyber attacks.
  The answer from each and every one of them was the same: We need to 
be able to share information on cyber threats with the government and 
other private entities. We need to receive information from them in 
order to know what they have done to effectively prevent and mitigate 
attacks.
  Estimates are that 85 percent of America's critical infrastructure is 
owned by the private sector. Since we depend so much on the private 
sector for our critical infrastructure, the lines of communication 
between government and the private sector must be open. If we share 
best practices, the result could be to make us a secure nation.
  Let me say as well, I have the highest regard for my friend and 
colleague Senator John McCain of Arizona. Senator McCain's life story 
is a story of patriotism and commitment to America. He understands the 
military far better than I ever will, having served and spent so many 
years working on the House Armed Services Committee. But I take 
exception to one of his statements earlier, at least what I consider to 
be the message of that statement, about how we have to be extremely 
careful in how we engage the

[[Page S5436]]

private sector in keeping America safe from cyber attack.
  I believe we should be open, transparent, and we should be respectful 
of the important resources and capacity of the private sector. But I 
think back 70 years now to what happened in London, when there was a 
blitzkrieg, and the decision was made by the British Government to 
appeal to every business, every home, every family, every individual to 
turn out the lights, because if the lights were on, those bombers from 
Germany knew where the targets could be found. It was a national effort 
to protect a nation. Should it have been a voluntary effort? Should we 
have had a big town meeting and said: Some of you can leave your lights 
on if you like, if you think it might be an inconvenience.
  There comes a moment when it comes to national defense when we need 
to appeal to a higher level in protecting America. My experience has 
been that the private sector is right there. They are as anxious to 
protect this country as anyone. They are as anxious to protect 
individuals, families, even their own businesses. So this notion that 
somehow we are adversarial in protecting America with the private 
sector I do not think is the case.
  In fact, Senator Collins is here representing the other side of the 
aisle. I know it is not the case. She and I have worked together. I 
have been very respectful of the efforts she and Senator Lieberman put 
into rewriting the rules for our intelligence community. They did it in 
a thoughtful and balanced way. This bill does too.
  Are there amendments we might take? Of course. This is not perfect. 
No product of legislation is. But I have to say I believe the private 
sector will be our ally, our friend, our partner in making America 
safe. This should not be a fight to the finish as to whether it is 
government or the private sector which will prevail. Ultimately, 
America has to prevail.
  Let me say a word about one part of this bill that I played a small 
role in addressing. Even through the threat in cyberspace is new and 
emerging, it calls to the forefront a familiar attention which we 
witnessed in Washington; on the one hand a mutually shared goal of 
protecting our country, on the other hand an important obligation to 
safeguard constitutionally protected rights to privacy and civil 
liberties.
  It is this tension that led us to a conversation about some 
provisions and trying to find the right balance. The Cybersecurity Act 
of 2012 is not perfect, but it effectively strikes that balance between 
national security and individual liberty. The bill will enhance our 
national security and still do it in a way that is far superior to some 
of the alternatives that will be offered on the floor.
  CISPA, the cybersecurity act that was passed by the House of 
Representatives, and SECURE IT, the alternative approach that has been 
introduced in the Senate, do not meet this standard, by my estimation. 
I wish to thank Senator Collins, Senator Lieberman, and all those 
engaged in this conversation but special thanks to my colleague Senator 
Franken because he is chair of the Privacy Subcommittee of our Senate 
Judiciary Committee.
  We joined together with some colleagues: Senators Coons, Blumenthal, 
Sanders, and Akaka. We asked the sponsors of the legislation to work 
with us and they did. The revised bill now requires that the government 
cybersecurity exchange, to which private companies can send threat 
indicators, must be operated by civilian agencies. I think that is 
smart.
  The cybersecurity threat indicator could be a sensitive, personal 
communication, such as an e-mail from a spouse or private message on a 
social media site. As a result of our efforts, no longer can personal 
communications be indiscriminately sent directly to the NSA or CIA. The 
people who work at these agencies are fine, dedicated public servants, 
but these agencies are often shrouded in secrecy. I learned that as a 
member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  To have the appropriate oversight, we ask that the first line of 
review be with a civilian agency subject to congressional oversight. 
This does not mean our intelligence and defense agencies will never be 
able to apply their experience and expertise to analyze and mitigate 
cyber threats. They should not be the first recipients, but the bill 
requires--and I think it is entirely appropriate--relevant cyber threat 
information can be shared by these agencies in real time. Waste no time 
doing it. Send it to the agencies if there is any perceived threat to 
America's security.

  The revised bill no longer provides immunity for companies that 
violate the privacy rights of Americans in a knowing, intentional, or 
grossly negligent way--not simple negligence but things that go over 
that line dramatically.
  I can support providing immunity for companies to share cybersecurity 
threats with the government, as long as they take adequate precautions 
and follow commonsense rules established in the bill.
  The revised bill enables law enforcement entities to receive 
information about cyber crimes from cybersecurity exchanges without 
first going to court to obtain a warrant. To ensure these exchanges are 
not used to circumvent the Constitution and they do not create a 
perpetual warrantless wiretap, the bill requires law enforcement to 
only use information from the exchanges to stop cyber crimes, prevent 
imminent death or bodily harm to adults or prevent exploitation of 
minors.
  The revised bill now requires that the rules for how the government 
will use and protect the private information it receives must be in 
place before companies begin sending information to the new 
cybersecurity exchanges. That makes sense. To be sure that government 
agencies follow the rules for using and protecting private information, 
the revised bill gives individuals the authority to hold the government 
accountable for privacy violations.
  To ensure transparency and accountability, the revised bill requires 
recurring, independent oversight by the inspector general and the 
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
  These are commonsense reforms. Senator Lieberman spoke to the 
Democratic Senate caucus luncheon the other day and addressed these 
directly. He said he took these changes to those who were in charge of 
our cybersecurity and said to them: Give me an honest, candid 
assessment. If you think this ties our hands in protecting America, 
tell me right now. They reviewed them carefully, debated them, and came 
back and said: No, these are things we can live with and work with. 
That is the kind of approval we are looking for from those who have 
this awesome responsibility.
  So as a result, this bill will have my support, because I think it 
keeps America safe from a threat which many Americans don't even know 
about but could literally take or change our lives in a heartbeat. It 
also has the support of many progressive groups from the left and 
center and right. It is an indication to me we have struck the right 
balance.
  I thank those who helped us reach this point. As with any piece of 
substantial legislation, there is going to be disagreement. Senator 
McCain expressed some areas of concern. That is what debate and 
amendments are all about. Let's move this bill forward this afternoon. 
Let's entertain relevant, germane amendments. Let's take this as 
seriously as the threat is serious to the United States. That, to me, 
is the right way to go.
  Again, I thank Senator Collins personally and all the others who made 
this bill a reality in bringing it to the floor for our consideration.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I want to rise very briefly--I know 
there are a number of Members who are seeking recognition--to thank my 
friend and colleague from Illinois for his statement today. He has 
worked very hard on this bill. I know it is an issue he cares deeply 
about, and I very much appreciate his taking the time to come to the 
floor and to urge Members to vote for the motion to proceed to the 
debate on this absolutely vital piece of legislation.
  I must say I was disappointed to hear some of the comments made on 
the Senate floor today in opposition to this bill. The fact is both 
Republican and Democratic officials have, with very

[[Page S5437]]

few exceptions, endorsed the framework of this bill and urged us to 
move forward. In fact, they have warned us repeatedly in saying the 
only question is when a major cyber attack will occur. Not whether it 
will occur, but when it will occur. We have letter after letter, 
statement after statement from national and homeland security experts, 
representing both President Bush's administration and the current 
administration, urging us to act.
  Indeed, yesterday the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group put out 
a statement, stating the following:

       The Aspen Homeland Security Group strongly urges the U.S. 
     Senate to vote this week to take up S. 3414, the cyber-
     security bill, for debate on the Floor.

  The statement goes on to say:

       We urge the Senate to adopt a program of voluntary cyber-
     security standards and strong positive incentives for 
     critical infrastructure operators to implement those 
     standards. The country is already being hurt by foreign 
     cyber-intrusions, and the possibility of a devastating cyber-
     attack is real. Congress must act now.

  This letter is signed by officials from the previous administration, 
such as Charles Allen, Stewart Baker, Michael Leiter, and Michael 
Chertoff. There are numerous representatives of past administrations 
and individuals who are renowned for their expertise. How can we ignore 
their warning that we must act, that it is urgent, and that we must 
have voluntary standards for critical infrastructure--infrastructure 
that, if it were attacked, would result in mass casualties, mass 
evacuations, a severe blow to our economy, or a serious degradation of 
our national security?
  That is the definition of the core critical infrastructure we want to 
cover and to help make more secure through a partnership with the 
private sector. And it has to be a partnership because 85 percent of 
critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector. We have worked 
hard to alter our bill to take suggestions from the private sector, 
from our colleagues, from the administration, and from experts across 
the philosophical range to improve our bill.
  I heard a Member saying this morning that somehow we are going to be 
hurting the high-tech sector of our society. Well, that is not what 
Cisco and Oracle think--certainly two of the leading businesses in the 
high-tech sector. This morning they wrote to us, the chief sponsors of 
the bill--Chairman Lieberman, Chairman Rockefeller, Chairman Feinstein, 
myself, and Senator Carper--and I want to read a brief excerpt from 
their letter. They said:

       . . . we appreciate your efforts to craft legislation that 
     addresses the important issue of cybersecurity by supporting 
     American industry in its efforts to continue to be the 
     world's leading innovators.

  The fact is, it is American businesses that are being robbed of 
billions of dollars every year due to cyber intrusions from foreign 
governments, from transnational criminals, and from hackers. This is a 
threat not only to our national security but to our economic 
prosperity.
  That is why the letter from Cisco and Oracle goes on to say:

       We praise your continued recognition of the importance of 
     these objectives through the provisions of S. 3414.

  They say they support those provisions. Continuing to read from the 
letter:

       We also commend your commitment to ensuring that the IT 
     industry maintains the ability to drive innovation and 
     security into technologies and the network.

  So the idea we heard this morning on the Senate floor that somehow we 
are going to bring innovation in America to a standstill or hurt this 
important sector of our economy is not supported by a reading of our 
bill, and it is certainly contradicted by the letter we received from 
Cisco and Oracle, leading companies in the high-tech sector.
  Finally, I would point out they thank us for our outreach, our 
willingness to engage in an exhaustive process around this issue set, 
and to consider and to respond to the views of America's technology 
sector. That is what we have done. That is what we are continuing to do 
with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle who bring varying views 
to this issue. But what we cannot do is to fail to act when the 
warnings are so constant and alarming about the threats to our Nation, 
to our economy, and to our way of life.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record the statement from the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group 
as well as the July 26 letter from Cisco and Oracle.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                                    July 24, 2012.

             Statement of the Aspen Homeland Security Group

       The Aspen Homeland Security Group strongly urges the U.S. 
     Senate to vote this week to take up S. 3414, the cyber-
     security bill, for debate on the floor. We urge the Senate to 
     adopt a program of voluntary cyber-security standards and 
     strong positive incentives for critical infrastructure 
     operators to implement those standards. The country is 
     already being hurt by foreign cyber-intrusions, and the 
     possibility of a devastating cyber-attack is real. Congress 
     must act now.
         Charles E. Allen; Stewart A. Baker; Richard Ben-Veniste; 
           Peter Bergen; Michael Chertoff; P.J. Crowley; Clark K. 
           Ervin; Jane Harman; Michael V. Hayden; Michael Leiter; 
           James M. Loy; Paul McHale; John McLaughlin; Phillip 
           Mudd; Eric T. Olson; Guy Swan, III; Juan Zarate; Philip 
           Zelikow.
                                  ____

                                                    July 26, 2012.
     Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman,
     Chairman, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental 
         Affairs, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Susan M. Collins,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Homeland Security and 
         Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. John D. Rockefeller,
     Chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, 
         U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Dianne Feinstein,
     Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Thomas R. Carper,
     U.S. Senator,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Lieberman, Collins, Rockefeller, Feinstein 
     and Carper: As two of the industry-leading companies 
     providing information technology across the nation and the 
     world, we appreciate your efforts to craft legislation that 
     addresses the important issue of cybersecurity by supporting 
     American industry in its efforts to continue to be the 
     world's leading innovators. This matter deserves the 
     continuing attention of industry, the Congress and the 
     Administration, and we commend you for having constructively 
     engaged stakeholders throughout this process.
       As you know, effective cybersecurity must be driven by an 
     IT industry that is free to drive innovation and security and 
     maintain world leadership in the creation of secure systems. 
     Effective cybersecurity depends on our having the ability to 
     drive innovation globally--it is our core value. We have long 
     advocated a cybersecurity approach based on the importance of 
     real information sharing that can help protect important 
     assets. We thank you for your leadership in recognizing that 
     any cybersecurity legislation must incorporate iron-clad 
     protections to ensure American industry remains the world's 
     leader in the creation and production of information 
     technology, and to make certain that legislation maintains 
     and protects industry's ability and opportunity to drive 
     innovation and security in technologies across global 
     networks.
       We praise your continued recognition of the importance of 
     these objectives through the provisions of S. 3414, the 
     Cybersecurity Act of 2012. The provisions regarding the 
     designation of critical cyber infrastructure, the specifics 
     of cybersecurity practices, and the treatment of the security 
     of the supply chain demonstrate your continued recognition of 
     these core principles, and we support them. Wherever the 
     important cyber debate takes this legislation, these core 
     principles should be promoted and preserved. We believe these 
     provisions as written capture that principle and believe it 
     is in the interest of cybersecurity and critical 
     infrastructure that they remain explicit. We also commend 
     your commitment to ensuring that the IT industry maintains 
     the ability to drive innovation and security into 
     technologies and the network. Further, we appreciate the 
     recognition that more needs to be done in advancing 
     innovation through increased research and development, and in 
     raising awareness and education, and importantly on 
     increasing global law enforcement.
       By explicitly maintaining these principles and provisions, 
     your legislation proposes a number of tools that will enhance 
     the nation's cybersecurity, without interfering with the 
     innovation and development processes of the American IT 
     industry. Ultimately, the ability of the tech industry to 
     continue to innovate will provide the best defense against 
     cyber attacks and data breaches.

[[Page S5438]]

       We also note the shift toward a voluntary framework for 
     critical cyber infrastructure in the new bill, and commend 
     and support the great strides you have made toward that goal. 
     We look forward to continuing to work with you on this issue.
       We thank you for your outreach, willingness to engage in an 
     exhaustive process around this issue set, and to consider and 
     respond to the views of America's technology sector. We look 
     forward to working with you and others in the Congress to 
     continue the public-private collaboration and to make sure 
     that what results continues to meet our common goals.
           Sincerely,

                                               Blair Christie,

     Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Government 
                                                          Affairs,
                                               Cisco Systems, Inc.

                                               Kenneth Glueck,

                          Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO
                                               Oracle Corporation.

  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about our Nation's 
defenses against cyber attacks, and I wish to commend the Senator from 
Maine for her leadership. She is the ranking member, of course, on the 
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. I wish also to 
commend all three chairs, Senators Lieberman, Feinstein, and 
Rockefeller, for their work.
  As I said, I rise today to talk about our Nation's defense against 
cyber attacks and how our Nation needs to respond to those threats 
which affect our national security, our economic security, and our 
privacy.
  News reports and experts confirm our Nation's critical 
infrastructure, such as our water systems, our power grid and so forth, 
are vulnerable to attacks from hackers and foreign governments. Every 
few weeks we hear about yet another breach--Yahoo and Gmail, Citibank, 
Bank of America, Sony PlayStation. Millions of people have had their 
names, passwords, credit card information or health information 
compromised.
  It isn't just our national security or economic well-being that is 
being threatened by these attacks, it is the Internet itself. If you 
want to use Facebook or a cloud-based e-mail provider to communicate 
with your friends and loved ones, you need to know that your private 
communications won't be exposed by hackers. If you want to use the 
Internet to spread new ideas or fight for democracy, you need to know 
your work won't be disrupted by hackers or repressive regimes.
  Unfortunately, it is hard to write a good cybersecurity bill, because 
when you try to make it easier for the government or Internet companies 
to detect and stop the work of hackers or other bad actors, you often 
end up making it easier--or very easy--for those same entities to snoop 
in on the lives of innocent Americans.
  Until recently, every major cybersecurity bill on the table would 
have done too much to immunize and expand the authority of the 
government and industry and far too little to protect our privacy and 
civil liberties. These bills would make it too easy for companies to 
hand over your e-mails and other private information to the 
government--even to the military. Setting aside the fourth amendment, 
these bills would allow almost all of that information to go to law 
enforcement. And these bills do far too little to hold these companies 
and the government accountable for their mistakes.
  A few months ago, I teamed up with Senators Durbin, Wyden, Sanders, 
Coons, Blumenthal, and Akaka to try to address this situation. We 
worked with privacy and civil liberties groups on the left, the right, 
and the center to come up with a package of proposals. We worked with 
the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for 
Democracy and Technology, which are traditionally associated with 
progressives; we worked with the Constitution Project, which is a 
bipartisan centrist think tank; and we worked with TechFreedom and the 
Competitive Enterprise Institute, which are conservative libertarian 
organizations.
  Together, we approached Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, 
Chairman Rockefeller, and Chairman Feinstein, and proposed a package of 
amendments to the information-sharing title of the Cybersecurity Act of 
2012.
  The information-sharing title is the part of the bill that will make 
it easier for companies to share critical information about cyber 
attacks with each other and with the government. These Senators engaged 
with us earnestly and in good faith. After a lot of hard work and a lot 
of conversations, the sponsors made a series of changes to the bill 
that are major, unequivocal victories for privacy and civil liberties.
  The bill is still not perfect, from my point of view, but I can say 
with confidence that when it comes to protecting both our cybersecurity 
and our civil liberties, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is the only game 
in town.
  I want to take a moment to explain the changes made to the 
information-sharing title, and compare how the Cybersecurity Act now 
stacks up with its rival bills, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and 
Protection Act, or CISPA, which recently passed the House, and the 
SECURE IT Act, which has been introduced here in the Senate.
  First of all, I agree we need to make it easier for companies to 
share time-sensitive information with experts in the government. But 
the cyber threat information that companies are sharing often comes 
from private, sensitive communications, like our e-mails. And so the 
gatekeeper of any information shared under these proposals should never 
be the military. It should never be the NSA. The men and women of the 
NSA are patriots and they are undoubtedly skilled and knowledgeable. 
But as Senator Durbin said, that institution is too shrouded in 
secrecy. And--he didn't say but as I will say--it has too dark a 
history of spying on innocent Americans to be trusted with this 
responsibility under any administration.
  Under the new, revised Cybersecurity Act of 2012, the one that will 
soon be before us on the floor, companies can use the authorities in 
the bill to give cyber threat information only to civilian agencies. 
That is a critical protection for civil liberties, and it is a 
protection that CISPA and the SECURE IT Act do not have. I want to be 
very clear. An America with CISPA and an America with the SECURE IT Act 
is an America where your e-mails can be shared directly, immediately, 
and with impunity, with the NSA.
  Second, any cybersecurity bill should focus on just that--
cybersecurity. It should not be a back door for warrantless wiretaps or 
information entirely unrelated to cyber attacks. In other words, once a 
company gives the government cyber threat information, the government 
shouldn't be able to say, Hey, this e-mail doesn't have a virus, but it 
does say that Michael is late on his taxes; I am going to send that to 
the IRS.
  Under the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, once a cyber exchange gets 
information, it can give that information to law enforcement only to 
prosecute or stop a cyber crime or to stop serious imminent harm to 
adults or serious harm to minors. CISPA actually has similar 
protections, but SECURE IT allows a far broader range of disclosures to 
law enforcement. Here in the Senate, the Cybersecurity Act is the 
proposal that does the most to respect the spirit and letter of the 
fourth amendment.
  Third, a cybersecurity bill should make it easier for a company to 
share information with experts in the government. But it has to hold 
companies that abuse that authority accountable for their actions. Both 
CISPA and the SECURE IT Act give companies immunity for knowing 
violations of your privacy. Under CISPA and the SECURE IT Act, if a 
company's CEO knows for a fact that his engineers are sending every one 
of your e-mails to the NSA, there is nothing you can do about it. That 
is not an exaggeration. Thanks to the changes I have pushed for--along 
with Senators Durbin, Wyden, Coons, Sanders, Blumenthal, and Akaka--the 
Cybersecurity Act does not protect companies that violate your privacy 
intentionally, knowingly, or with gross negligence.
  Fourth, and finally, a cybersecurity bill should also hold the 
government accountable for its actions. Under both CISPA and the SECURE 
IT Act, companies can start giving the Federal Government your private 
information well before the government actually has privacy rules in 
place for how to handle that information.
  Under the SECURE IT Act, the government has total immunity from 
lawsuits arising out of its cybersecurity

[[Page S5439]]

operations--total immunity for the government. The SECURE IT Act also 
lacks any regular independent oversight of the Federal Government's 
actions under these new authorities. The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 now 
has all three of these protections. Under this bill, privacy rules have 
to be in place on the first day companies start giving the government 
information. People can sue the government when it abuses its 
authority. And there will be recurrent, independent oversight by both 
the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and inspectors general.
  These are just the four main categories of changes that the sponsors 
of the Cybersecurity Act have adopted. There are other changes, too, 
that I won't go into now.
  Before I close, I want to elaborate on one way I do think we need to 
improve the Cybersecurity Act to better protect privacy. The sponsors 
of the bill have rightly adopted several critical protections. I hope 
they will accept at least one more amendment that I think is very 
important. I will talk about my amendment more on another occasion, but 
for now I want to flag it for my colleagues.
  For decades, Federal law has given Internet service providers and 
other companies the right to monitor their systems to protect 
themselves and their customers from cybersecurity threats. They also 
have the right to deploy what are called countermeasures to protect 
their systems against those threats. So these companies have the right 
to monitor and protect themselves; but at the same time, Federal law 
prevents them from abusing those rights. If an ISP starts randomly 
picking customers and reading their e-mails, their customers--and the 
government--can take them to court, and the ISP can't throw its hands 
up and plead cybersecurity.

  This is why, when the President of the United States brought together 
all of the Federal agencies to craft a bill that would comprehensively 
protect our cybersecurity, that proposal included a new authority for 
companies to disclose information to the government but contained no 
new authority for companies to monitor e-mail or deploy 
countermeasures. When the administration's lawyers were asked why that 
was, they said that doing so would have been duplicative--duplicative--
because the companies already have those rights.
  Right now, the Cybersecurity Act and the President's proposal are not 
in line with each other, because unlike the President's proposal, the 
Cybersecurity Act does give ISPs and other companies a brandnew right 
to monitor communications and to deploy countermeasures. That right is 
very broad--so broad that if a company uses that power negligently to 
snoop in on your e-mail or damage your computer, they will be immune 
from any lawsuit. I plan to offer an amendment to delete these new 
monitoring and countermeasures authorities and bring this bill in line 
with the President's proposal. I hope my colleagues here in the Senate 
will join me in passing this amendment. Seven of my colleagues have 
already indicated they will cosponsor this amendment.
  But I want to end on a high note. I don't want my amendment to cloud 
my central message here, so I will repeat what I said earlier. The 
Cybersecurity Act is not perfect, but when it comes to striking a 
balance between cybersecurity and privacy and civil liberties, it is 
the only game in town. It is far more protective of our rights than 
either CISPA or the SECURE IT Act. I thank the sponsors of the 
Cybersecurity Act for taking this high road, and I urge my colleagues 
to vote to proceed to the bill so we can have a good, full debate on 
it.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Madam President, I am honored to be able to join the 
Senator from Minnesota in speaking today in support of all the Members 
of this body voting to proceed to the consideration of the important 
cybersecurity bill to which he and Senator Durbin have spoken.
  Today we have an opportunity to celebrate progress--very real, very 
concrete, and very important progress--in the legislative efforts to 
make America both more secure and yet retain our core constitutional 
freedoms: the protections of privacy that Americans have held dear from 
the very beginning of this Republic.
  As I have said before on this floor, taking action to protect our 
Nation from the very real and urgent threat of cyber attack is of 
paramount importance, something so urgent that it deserves our 
undivided attention. But so is protecting the privacy rights of law-
abiding American citizens.
  As we work together toward this commonsense, compromise piece of 
legislation the Senate should consider in coming days, I fought hard, 
along with several colleagues, to ensure we maintain the right balance 
between privacy and security. That balance is essential. Compromising 
our liberty would be as dangerous as compromising our safety. But 
thanks to the hard work of so many of my colleagues--in particular 
Senator Durbin, Senator Franken, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Merkley, 
Senator Sanders, and others--we found that appropriate balance in this 
legislation that is before us.
  The changes we have made to the original text and to the House-passed 
version have significantly strengthened privacy rights. That is why I 
say we can celebrate real progress here today.
  I long thought it was the privacy issues that would be the rock on 
which this ship would founder, that the critical and unaddressed 
privacy issues in CISPA and SECURE IT, spoken to by Senator Franken, 
would be issues that would prevent me from supporting cybersecurity 
legislation in this session of Congress. But we have made remarkable 
progress. Let me briefly review a few of the areas where that progress 
has been made.
  We made sure companies cannot pry into the private online activities 
of everyday Americans in the name of national security. I want to 
mention one more improvement.
  In addition to those mentioned by Senator Franken just before me 
concerning legal immunities contained in this bill, this bill 
appropriately gives companies the authority to share cyber threat-
related information with each other and the government, without which 
we can't know what the rapidly emerging significant national cyber 
threats are. It also gives them immunity from suit if they do so. So if 
companies share with each other real-time cyber threat information, 
they cannot be sued. But prior versions of this bill might have 
provided bad actors with immunity against all privacy laws. So instead, 
we added tough provisions to ensure if a company acts recklessly or 
willfully to violate the law and the online privacy of its customers, 
they will be held accountable. This legislation now, in my view, 
strikes an appropriate balance between empowering companies and 
providing them certainty, as well as maintaining the privacy rights of 
Americans and their customers.
  In this new, better, stronger legislation, it is no longer the case 
that companies can share your data and violate your privacy because you 
interact with them online. If that had remained in this bill, I would 
have expected millions of Americans to mobilize to stop this 
legislation. But we are here today as a group of Senators to announce 
that real progress has been made, and we are comfortable with and 
support this legislation from a privacy perspective.
  I urge my colleagues, when we take up this vote later this afternoon, 
to vote to proceed to the bill and to allow us a full and robust debate 
on this cybersecurity legislation.
  Getting to this new and improved legislation was a team effort, and 
special credit is due to Senators Lieberman and Collins for leading the 
way, for being willing to find common ground on challenging issues. 
There was also a great deal of work done by my senior Senator Tom 
Carper and by Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller who chair committees 
and were also essential to making such great progress.
  One of the aspects of cybersecurity and the threat to our country 
that keeps me up at night is that it is constantly evolving. Our 
enemies are smart, they are capable, and they are fast. That means our 
cyber defenses have to be flexible, adaptable, and regularly evaluated 
in order to keep up.
  One good thing about the House version of this legislation is that it 
includes a sunset provision requiring that in 5 years, this body once 
again

[[Page S5440]]

must take a hard and serious look at cybersecurity threats, and update 
or change our defense as needed, and ensure that privacy protections 
have been fully observed.
  That is not just good strategy, it is good sense. Think about the 
capabilities of your computer, your cell phone 5 years ago compared to 
today. The pace of change is faster online than ever before, and we 
need the kind of legislative process that allows us to review our work 
and ensure not only that we stay ahead of the curve in defending our 
country but we continue to strike the right balance between privacy and 
security.
  That is why, similar to Senator Franken before me, I intend to 
introduce an amendment on the floor--which I hope will earn 
consideration by this body and the support of my colleagues--to take 
the sunset provision of our House counterparts and match that in the 
Senate in this bill. It is the right thing to do to help keep us safe 
and to help our military leaders and cybersecurity experts stay one 
step ahead of those who would wish us harm.
  In closing, I thank Senator Whitehouse, who has been an important 
part of two different teams working on this bill. Senators Kyl and 
Whitehouse led a team that worked hard on critical infrastructure. I 
wish to thank Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, who participated in 
the privacy side work and in the critical infrastructure work. Now we 
are speaking to title VII, to the information-sharing provision of the 
bill and the dramatic and real progress that has been made in 
addressing the balance between security and privacy.
  There has also been great progress made, in my view, in addressing 
the issues of critical infrastructure, and I invite Senator Blumenthal 
of Connecticut, who has contributed so well to both these efforts, to 
address the Chamber at this time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I thank my very distinguished and 
effective colleague from Delaware for his great work as part of a team 
that has sought to enhance the protections of privacy in this bill. His 
perspective as a local official, as a constitutional expert, as someone 
who cares deeply about privacy and civil liberties, has been invaluable 
to this effort. He too has participated in the critical infrastructure 
team which both of us have been privileged to join with Senators 
Whitehouse and Kyl, who have been so enormously helpful in this effort. 
I join him as well in thanking our colleagues Senators Akaka, Durbin, 
Franken, Sanders, and Wyden for their very important efforts to protect 
privacy and civil liberties in the information-sharing title of the 
cybersecurity act.
  We have truly worked as a team and, in many ways, a bipartisan team 
in forging this legislation. Of course, we have followed the lead of 
Senators Lieberman and Collins who have been at the forefront of this 
effort, as well as Senators Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Carper, who 
deserve our appreciation for drafting the bill, shepherding it through 
committee, and bringing a modified version to the floor where now we 
have the historic opportunity to move forward. I am here to urge my 
colleagues, in fact, to move forward and vote to proceed to the bill 
later today.
  We have made good progress on this legislation. I am optimistic that 
we will pass a cybersecurity bill in the very near future--as we must 
for all the reasons that have been articulated by myself and others. 
This Nation is under attack. It is under cyber attack. Literally, every 
day our defense industrial base, our military systems, and our private 
industry are under attack by nations and by hackers, both sophisticated 
and unsophisticated, abroad and at home. We must make sure we provide 
the tools and the resources, legal resources and authority to stop that 
attack, to deter it, to defeat it, to make sure our country is defended 
against it effectively and comprehensively.
  The nature of defending against cyber attack involves information 
sharing. There is no way around that basic fact that information about 
the attacks--the sources, the objects and targets, the times--all the 
details are, in essence, the power to defend. Information is power when 
it comes to defending against cyber attack. Yet we also know that 
information, when shared, can also be abused. Some of the most tragic 
chapters of our Nation's history have involved snooping, spying, 
surveilling, and then sharing of information that is inappropriate and 
unnecessary and sometimes illegal.
  We know also that one of our core constitutional protections is, in 
fact, the right to privacy. It is enshrined in our Constitution. It 
dates from our founding. It is integral to the fabric of the rule of 
law. We resisted and rejected the rule of the British, in part, because 
they had no respect for the privacy of the colonials. That basic value 
has inspired the rule of law since.
  There is a saying--I believe it is a Latin saying--that in war, law 
is the first casualty. We are in a cyber war, but our constitutional 
law cannot be a casualty. Our right to privacy and civil liberties must 
be protected.
  Information sharing must involve the right information shared with 
the right people and officials for the right purposes. There must be 
red lines and red lights. There must be consequences if those red lines 
or red lights are disregarded or dismissed.
  This bill meets those basic requirements. It is enforceable and it 
must be enforced. In fact, I will offer an amendment to increase the 
enforceability and enforcement of these basic protections by increasing 
the penalties for violating these basic protections. The trust and 
confidence of our Nation in the rule of law depends on our getting it 
right: information sharing with the right information to the right 
people and for the right purposes.
  The kinds of modifications contained in this bill are critically 
important. They are in sharp contrast to the House-approved version of 
CISPA, which utterly fails to protect civil liberties and privacy 
rights in sufficient degree. Unlike past versions, this measure 
establishes unequivocal civilian control of cybersecurity information 
exchanges. Unlike past versions, this bill bars companies from using 
cybersecurity as a pretext for violating FCC net neutrality rules. 
Unlike other versions, this bill bars companies from using 
cybersecurity as a pretext for violating other guarantees, and it 
allows citizens to hold companies accountable and take them to court 
for knowingly or grossly negligent violations of the information-
sharing provisions of this bill.
  Equally important, it enables them to hold the U.S. Government and 
other public officials responsible and take them to court if they 
violate the privacy guarantees in this bill.
  A private company receiving someone's private information while 
monitoring for cyber threat should protect that information. It is a 
public trust and a public responsibility. This act protects Americans' 
privacy by requiring companies that obtain that kind of information--
some of it medical or financial of the most confidential and private 
nature--through monitoring, to protect that information.
  This measure also imposes restrictions on the use of shared 
information for law enforcement purposes. The government can only 
provide information to law enforcement if it relates to a cyber crime 
or a serious threat to public safety; that is, physical safety--bodily 
harm. Law enforcement can only use information to prosecute or stop 
cyber attacks to prevent that kind of imminent and immediate harm to a 
person or a child.
  There are other protections--some of them have been mentioned by 
Senators Franken and Coons before me--that I will support. For example, 
Senator Franken mentioned that his amendment would eliminate new 
authorities in the bill to monitor communications or operate 
countermeasures. Senator Coons mentioned a 5-year sunset on the use of 
information sharing under this measure to help guard against unforeseen 
consequences of the legislation and ensure that congressional oversight 
occurs on a regular and foreseeable basis. Other measures which I 
consider important would require Federal agencies that suffer a data 
breach to notify affected individuals and allow those individuals to 
recover damages and require the creation of a new office in the Office 
of Management and Budget, that of Chief Privacy Officer.

[[Page S5441]]

  I support these amendments and I support also increasing the 
penalties in the event that government or companies violate the 
protections in this statute.
  We have indeed made progress. There is more to do. I hope more 
progress will be made. I foresee passage of a cybersecurity measure 
that is desperately and direly needed in this country--not at some 
point in the future but now. As others before me have said on this 
floor and as I have said before, cybersecurity is national security and 
we must protect our national security while at the same time retaining 
the reason, our fundamental rights and civil liberties, that we want to 
protect our Nation and its constitutional values.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MORAN. Madame President, I ask that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded and that I may speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator may speak as in morning business.


                            Meatless Monday

  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, yesterday I was on the Senate floor, and 
I had the opportunity to highlight a development at the Department of 
Agriculture. We learned yesterday afternoon that the Department of 
Agriculture, in an employee newsletter, was promoting something called 
Meatless Mondays. The Department of Agriculture newsletter offered 
encouragement for its employees and I assume others who might see the 
newsletter--even tourists who visit Washington, DC, and eat at the 
Department of Agriculture cafeteria--to participate in Meatless Monday. 
It indicates the desirability of reducing the consumption of meat and 
dairy products. I found that very startling and surprising. Never in my 
life would I expect the Department of Agriculture, which I always 
presumed is the farmers' and ranchers' friend, to be promoting the idea 
that it is a bad idea to eat the products of farms and ranches across 
Kansas and our Nation. Yet that is what we saw and read yesterday.
  The Department of Agriculture newsletter said that ``beef production 
requires a lot of water, fertilizer, fossil fuels, and pesticides. In 
addition, there are many health concerns related to excessive 
consumption of meat.'' Those are the words of the Department of 
Agriculture newsletter. I am pleased to report that in asking Secretary 
Vilsack to reconsider what the Department had said and was promoting, 
they have done that and they have apparently removed the promotion from 
their newsletter and from their Web site. That is a positive 
development, and so I appreciate that happening.
  It is amazing to me, unfortunately, that this is just one of many 
circumstances in which we see administration agencies and departments 
on the side of something that those of us who believe strongly in 
traditional family agriculture across the country believe is very 
important. One would expect in this case that the Department of 
Agriculture would promote the consumption of meat. In fact, within the 
Department of Agriculture, we have the Secretary saying in his mission 
statement that he is about increasing and expanding domestic and 
foreign markets for beef and meat products. We have the U.S. beef 
board, organized and monitored by the Department of Agriculture, whose 
job it is to promote agricultural products. Many of us in Congress try 
to encourage the sale of agricultural products, particularly meat and 
beef products, to South Korea and China. We have debated on the Senate 
floor the value of trade agreements, most recently with Colombia, South 
Korea, and Panama, because we believe in the opportunity for American 
producers to sell their products around the globe. Yet we saw at least 
some at USDA who have the view that we need to discourage the 
consumption of meat for environmental and health reasons.
  Particularly troublesome is the fact that the Department of 
Agriculture was citing the United Nations as a reason that we ought to 
discourage the consumption of beef for environmental reasons. Our 
Department of Agriculture positions ought to be based upon sound 
science, not some U.N. study.
  Beef is an important and vital component of the Kansas economy. We 
are the second largest beef-producing State in the country. The 
economic impact to our country is around $44 billion. Beef exports in 
2011 were over $4.08 billion. This matters to us greatly.
  This is happening at a time in which to the cattle producers across 
the Midwest, including in the State of the President today, the drought 
is so damaging.
  It is also happening at a time in which we have been having the 
debate about the farm bill. My farmers in Kansas will often say: I know 
we need to do something about reducing spending. We have to get the 
deficit under control.
  In fact, the farm bill we passed in the Senate has a reduction in the 
farm bill spending of $23 billion. No one likes to see something that 
is important to them go away, but if this farm bill becomes legislation 
and direct payments leave, the safety net for producers across our 
country will be less. Yet farmers and ranchers say: We have a 
responsibility as American citizens to give these things up, to reduce 
the spending that comes our way, but please don't do anything that is 
damaging to us as far as our ability to earn a living in the free 
market, in the real world.
  So when we see something like this from the Department of Agriculture 
discouraging the use of meat products--and, again, at a time in which 
the temperatures across my State have been over 100 degrees for more 
than a month. We had a record high of 118 degrees. Perhaps that is a 
record high on the globe. It certainly is in the United States. In 
Norton, KS, it was 118 degrees. Rain is so scarce, we spend a lot of 
time in our State down on our knees praying for moisture and we spend a 
lot of time looking up to the skies hoping for moisture. We need to 
make sure that what we do in this Congress and what the Obama 
administration does is not something that diminishes the chances for 
the survival of family farms in the United States, certainly at home in 
Kansas and around rural America.
  If this was just an isolated instance, perhaps the point has been 
made and the words have been withdrawn, but I remember we started a 
year ago with a Department of Labor that concluded that we need to 
regulate the use of 14- and 15-year-olds on family farms. That was a 
real misunderstanding of how production agriculture and family farms 
work. Agriculture is a family operation, and yet we had the Department 
of Labor suggesting that someone 15 years old should perhaps not be 
able to work on their own family's farm. I remember just 6 months or so 
ago, I was on the Senate floor worried about a Department of 
Agriculture forum on animal safety that was being organized by the 
Humane Society. Again, my farmers and ranchers would say--particularly 
in a time of drought and where the safety net provided by the farm bill 
is going to become less--please don't do anything that is harmful to 
us, that reduces the chance for us to succeed.
  In this regulatory environment in which we find ourselves, we need to 
take the steps that promote agriculture, not do things that diminish 
the opportunity for a farmer or rancher to earn a living in the free 
market.
  Yesterday we had a debate about estate taxes and the consequences to 
family agriculture across the country, and again, at a time in which 
the drought is so prevalent, circumstances so difficult, the Tax Code 
matters greatly and the ability to pass a family farm from one 
generation to the next is critical. It is so much about agriculture in 
States such as mine that when our farmers and ranchers don't succeed, 
the success of the communities in which they live and raise their kids 
greatly diminishes. This is a way of life for us, and we need to make 
certain we have a Department of Agriculture that is promoting our 
farmers and ranchers and their success.
  I was on the Senate floor yesterday with the Senator from Wyoming. We 
had a conversation about the drought, the estate taxes, and the farm 
bill. I am interested if the Senator from Wyoming has any further 
thoughts. I know he is a leader in the Western Caucus. As Members of 
the Senate, we are in

[[Page S5442]]

the process of writing Secretary Vilsack in regard to the promotion of 
Meatless Monday. There are those who have a different view about what 
their menus should be and what they want to see on the menu, and that 
is fine with me. That is a personal decision. But the Department of 
Agriculture ought to be supportive of the people who produce the food, 
fiber, and energy for our country each and every day. They get up at 
sunrise and go to bed after sunset because they are out there trying to 
make a living on family farms across the country.
  I yield for the Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, never in my life would I expect to see 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture come out against farming, ranching, 
agriculture, and its products.
  I was talking to a radio station this morning in Afton, WY. They were 
astonished. They had not heard the news of this yet, and they are now 
fully aware of it. They are grateful to the Senator from Kansas because 
one of those involved actually had heard the Senator on the floor last 
night talking about Meatless Mondays and then the USDA linking ranching 
and farming to climate change. It is not just cattle or beef 
producers--and beef is clearly the No. 1 cash crop for Wyoming--but the 
USDA has gone after dairy products, such as milk and cheese, as part of 
a climate change issue.
  So this does seem to be an assault against a way of life, a 
significant part of our country's heritage, as well as our economic 
future. We see this assault on our products through the Department of 
Agriculture. We see it as an assault on family values of young families 
working together, as we have seen with the Department of Labor. And now 
yesterday, with a vote on this Senate floor, there was an attack by a 
reinstitution of the death tax. People are trying to keep a family 
operation within the family, a ranch or a farm, all across rural 
America. These small businesses in communities all across the country 
are finding that it is going to be much more difficult, under what the 
Democrats voted for yesterday, to keep their ranches and farms in the 
family.
  I know farmers and ranchers in Wyoming where a member of the family 
works in town just to make the money to pay the expenses of keeping the 
operation of the farm or the ranch going. They know full well that 
under the Democratic proposal, if someone were to die, once that 
becomes the case, their chances of being able to hold on to that 
operation are reduced to almost nothing. Bringing back the costs of the 
death tax to the levels of the Clinton administration, anything over $1 
million in assessed value would be taxed at 55 percent. The only 
solution for many is to sell.
  There are three specific attacks: the death tax attack, the Meatless 
Monday attack, and the attack on children helping out on the family or 
neighbor farm or ranch. There are values that they learn through the 
FFA. All of those things make me wonder in what direction the country 
is heading. I guess that is no surprise when only one in three 
Americans all across the country think the country is heading in the 
right direction.
  I am happy to join my colleague from Kansas who came to the Senate 
floor yesterday to bring this to the attention of the Senate. He and I 
are working together to now address the Secretary of Agriculture to 
make sure that something like this doesn't happen again and to make 
sure that the Secretary does insist that farmers and ranchers across 
this country--and the products that they make and should be promoted by 
the Department of Agriculture--receive the proper honor that is 
deserved by them for what they do to continue to put food on the table 
and continue to bring forth the values from those who built this great 
country.
  I thank my friend and colleague, the Senator from Kansas, for 
bringing this to the attention of the Nation.
  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, just to conclude my remarks, I would 
indicate that my family and I will be eating more beef, not less. I 
would urge Americans to respond in that way. It is an opportunity for 
us to support the cattlemen and the livestock producers of our country 
at a time when they are selling their herds because the drought is so 
severe that there is no grass and no feed to feed the cattle. As a 
result, the market is depressed and prices are lower because there are 
so many sales occurring. We can help our livestock producers, our farm 
and ranch families in the country, by having a hamburger or steak. 
Let's go back to that traditional American meal of ``let's eat beef.'' 
The front of my truck at home says ``Eat Beef,'' and I would encourage 
Kansans and Americans to do so at this time when our livestock 
producers, due to the drought, are struggling so greatly.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            A Second Opinion

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today, as I do 
week after week since the health care law was passed, to give a 
doctor's second opinion about the health care law that I believe is bad 
for patients, bad for the providers, the nurses and the doctors who 
take care of those patients, and terrible for the American taxpayers.
  I come to the floor today reminding myself and the Senate of some 
promises the President made during the health care debate. The 
President had a couple of key promises. The first was he stated that 
health insurance premiums would go down. The second promise he made was 
that if a person likes their insurance plan, they can keep it.
  The President actually reiterated the second point after the Supreme 
Court issued its decision regarding the health care law a few weeks 
ago. From the East Room of the White House, the President proclaimed:

       If you're one of the 250 million Americans who already have 
     health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.

  Perhaps the President does not know that his health care law has 
already forced many colleges and universities to stop offering their 
student health plans or perhaps the President is unaware that one can 
no longer purchase a child-only health insurance policy in many States, 
including my home State of Wyoming.
  Apparently, the President has not spoken to businesses across the 
country that must actually deal with the ramifications of his health 
care law. I speak with business owners around Wyoming every weekend as 
I travel around the State, and the people with whom I speak believe the 
law will increase the cost of their insurance, increase the cost of 
their care, and make it more difficult for them to provide insurance 
for their employees.
  Now we have a new study--a report that has come out from the Deloitte 
consulting firm--and it has spoken to businesses all across the country 
about the law. The results were compiled in their 2012 survey of 
employers. In this report, the company did random surveys of 560 
companies with 50 or more employees. These results are only from 
companies that currently offer health insurance to their employees.
  So what are the results? Well, the results are not encouraging. They 
found that approximately 1 in 10 employers is considering dropping the 
health coverage they currently supply to their employees over the next 
few years. Specifically, they found that 9 percent of companies expect 
to drop their insurance coverage, while another 10 percent of 
respondents said they weren't sure about how they would proceed. The 
survey revealed that small businesses--those with between 50 and 100 
workers--are going to be hit especially hard by this new health care 
law.
  Thirteen percent of the businesses in this category stated they would 
drop their insurance coverage in the next 1 to 3 years. Thirteen 
percent of all of those small businesses with between 50 and 100 
employees plan to drop their insurance within 1 to 3 years.
  Keep in mind that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office did 
some evaluations and thought that only 7 percent of workers would lose 
their employer-provided health insurance starting in 2014 because the 
President, looking straight into the camera straight from the White 
House, said, ``If you like what you have, you can keep it.''
  Companies also made it clear that how implementation of the health 
care law moves forward would impact their

[[Page S5443]]

decisions. How so? Here is an example: Approximately one-third of the 
companies stated they might decide to stop offering health insurance if 
they find that the law passed by the Democrats in this Senate, along 
partisan lines--if these companies find that the health insurance under 
the law and required by the law requires them to offer more generous 
benefits than they currently provide, they are likely--one-third--to 
discontinue providing health insurance.
  Why is that? Well, it is because the President's health care law 
actually mandates what kind of insurance companies must give to their 
employees. This is what is called the essential health benefits package 
or, as most Americans refer to it, government-approved insurance. It 
may not be the insurance you want or the insurance you like; it may not 
be the insurance you need or it may not be the insurance you can 
afford. No matter how we look at it, the President and those who 
supported this law say they know better than American consumers, 
American workers, and people in need of insurance.
  So instead of allowing businesses and workers to decide what kind of 
insurance they need, the health care law empowers Federal bureaucrats 
to make this decision.
  In an article that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the 
chief financial officer of McDonald's stated that he thought 
implementing the health care law could cost his company more than $400 
million a year. So businesses that decide they can't afford to offer 
this government-approved insurance are going to be forced to pay a 
penalty.
  How big is the penalty? That is a legitimate question. The Supreme 
Court says it is a tax--a tax. So they are going to have to pay a tax. 
So for companies with over 50 employees, they will have to pay, 
starting at $2,000 per worker. That sounds like a lot of money, but 
keep this in mind: In 2011 the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the 
average cost of employer-provided health insurance for families was 
over $15,000. So they can decide: Do they pay the government $2,000, 
that tax, or do they pay $15,000 for the insurance? This means many 
companies would have a sizable financial incentive to simply drop the 
insurance.
  So then what happens? What happens to these folks who previously had 
the insurance the President said they could keep? Of course, we all 
know they can't because, once again, the President misled the American 
people--I believe intentionally. Well, then these employees who were 
dropped would have to enroll in a government-run exchange. So what 
happens in the exchange? Well, many of these individuals would qualify 
for subsidies from the Federal Government to help them purchase 
insurance--subsidies from the Federal Government to help them pay for 
insurance that they were previously getting at work, but now because of 
the health care law they can't get it anymore.
  So who is going to end up subsidizing this? The American taxpayers 
are now going to be paying for the health insurance instead of the 
employer. This is not only going to cause many Americans to lose their 
health insurance, but it will also make the $1 trillion health care law 
even more expensive than the Congressional Budget Office said this past 
week.

  Many businesses surveyed stated they do not intend on dumping the 
health insurance plans, but they said something else. They said they 
are not going to stop providing it. Instead, employers are saying to 
workers: If you want to keep this, you are going to have to pick up the 
additional cost of your insurance coverage, and you are going to have 
to do it by helping to pay higher copays, higher deductibles, or 
participating and contributing to the higher premiums we are going to 
have to pay.
  So for those Americans lucky enough to keep their employer-provided 
coverage, they will now be paying more money for that privilege. This 
means employees have essentially two alternatives under this health 
care law. Either they will lose their employer-provided coverage or 
they will be facing higher insurance premiums.
  For over 150 million Americans who receive their insurance through 
their employer, neither of these choices is a good one. It didn't have 
to be this way. That is why I remain committed to repealing the 
President's health care law and replacing it with patient-centered 
reforms that will allow patients to get the care they need from a 
doctor they choose at lower cost.
  Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for up to 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. I am here to talk about two very different subjects, 
two very different bills. One is the farm bill, and one is the Violence 
Against Women Act. Both bills are stuck over in the House of 
Representatives, and both bills should pass. Both bills received 
significant bipartisan support in the Senate. I am simply asking my 
colleagues in the other body to get their job done and to get these 
bills passed.


                             The Farm Bill

  I will start with the farm bill. Minnesota is fifth in the country 
for agriculture. It means a lot to our State, it means a lot to the 
rural areas, but it is also tied to our metropolitan area with our farm 
businesses, with our food producers, and it is clearly tied in with the 
rest of the country. This spring's talk of a bin-busting crop has 
burned away under the extreme summer heat. Farmers and ranchers across 
the country are experiencing what the U.S. Department of Agriculture is 
calling the most widespread drought we have seen in decades.
  With nearly 90 percent of the corn and soybean crops being grown in 
areas impacted by the drought, the crop losses are being felt not just 
by our grain farmers but also are driving up feed prices for our 
livestock, poultry, and dairy producers. As we well know, dairy 
producers have already come off some very difficult years.
  Higher feed costs for cattle, pork, poultry and dairy impact all 
Americans at the grocery store. Yesterday the USDA estimated that 
consumers could expect to pay 3 to 4 percent more for groceries next 
year at this point.
  While some people might think that food magically appears on their 
tables or in their grocery stores, in Minnesota we know food is 
produced every day by our farmers. Farmers stand behind each General 
Mills box of Cheerios or every Jennie-O turkey on the dinner table. 
That is why when I travel our State I am always reminded of the 
critical role farming plays in our State's economy and in our country's 
economy. It has, in fact, been one of the brightest spots. Minnesotans 
in rural communities and larger cities all benefit from a strong farm 
economy that provides jobs at farms, mills, processing plants, and 
equipment manufacturers.
  While Congress can't do anything about the lack of rain, we shouldn't 
make this disaster worse by delaying the passage of the farm bill, 
which gives farmers and ranchers the assistance they need to help 
weather this disaster and the certainty they need to make plans for 
next year and the year after and the year after that. The fact that the 
2008 farm bill was a 5-year time period was key to the stability in the 
rural areas. It was key so farmers could plan ahead. It made a 
difference during the downturn. We need to do that same thing again.
  I think it is a mistake for the House leadership to delay further 
action on the farm bill. These bills are never easy, but in the Senate 
we were able to work through 70 amendments before passing the 
bipartisan farm bill with a strong 64-to-35 vote. Maybe they should do 
the same.
  As part of our responsibility to do more with fewer resources, this 
bill includes over $23 billion in cuts over the 2008 farm bill. We 
eliminated direct payments, further focused farm payments on our family 
farmers, and worked to eliminate fraud and waste through the farm bill 
to ensure these programs are efficient and targeted.
  President Eisenhower was famously quoted as saying this:

       Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and 
     you're a thousand miles from the corn field.

  I fear that some in Washington have taken that same position and are 
content with kicking the can down the road and leaving rural America in 
the lurch. Well, those of us in the Senate

[[Page S5444]]

who supported this bill--Democrats and Republicans--were not content 
with putting our heads in the sand. We weren't content with just 
letting the crops burn out in the fields. We wanted to get something 
done.
  There are those in the House, such as Representative Collin Peterson 
of Minnesota, who are trying valiantly to get this farm bill through 
the House. We must let them do this.
  The Senate passed the 5-year farm bill because it is important. It is 
important because it strengthens the crop insurance program, it funds 
livestock disaster programs for this year, and continues the program 
through the end of the farm bill. It ensures that the programs farmers 
use to get help through tough times, such as the emergency financing 
credit program or disaster grazing authorities, will be continued with 
unbroken service.
  The farm bill also includes two of my amendments that will help 
farmers get through these tough times. The first amendment reduces the 
cost of accessing crop insurance by 10 percent for beginning farmers. 
This is critical because beginning farmers are less able to afford crop 
insurance protection and are under greater financial stress because of 
the drought.
  The second amendment eliminates the penalty for beginning farmers 
that graze livestock on CRP land. This will help beginning ranchers 
struggling with high feed prices and will also benefit all livestock 
producers by freeing up the corn to be fed to other animals.
  Secretary Vilsack is working at the USDA to help producers with this 
drought. Under his leadership, the USDA has streamlined the disaster 
declaration process, reducing the time it takes to start getting help 
for impacted counties by 40 percent. They reduced the interest rate for 
emergency loans, as well as reduced the penalty for producers grazing 
livestock on conservation reserve program acres from 25 down to 10 
percent.
  While these are important steps, they in no way replace the help 
farmers in this country will get from this farm bill. We all know it is 
not just a farm bill, it is a food bill. Only 14 percent of this that 
we look at is farm programs. The rest are conservation programs. The 
rest are important school lunch programs. This is a farm bill for the 
country not just the rural areas. But we can see--anyone who drives 
through Wisconsin, anyone who drives through Indiana or Missouri or 
Iowa can see--firsthand why we need this safety net for our farmers, 
why we need this safety net for our country.

  We plead with the House to get this done, to follow the leadership of 
Collin Peterson and those of us in the Senate who, on a bipartisan 
basis, got this farm bill done. They need to take it to the floor.


                       Violence Against Women Act

  Madam President, as I mentioned, there is a second bill that has also 
been hung up, a bipartisan bill that received significant support in 
the Senate--in fact, it got the support of every single woman Senator 
in this body, Democrat and Republican--and that is the Violence Against 
Women Act.
  Here in the Senate we passed that reauthorization bill in April on a 
bipartisan 68-to-31 vote. Getting to that point was a tough road. It 
was not always clear we were going to pass the bill. Just like the two 
reauthorizations from 2000 and 2006, our bill strengthens current law 
and provides solutions to problems we have learned more about since the 
Violence Against Women Act was first passed in 1994. Ever since then, 
this bill has been able to get through both Houses on a bipartisan 
basis without significant controversy.
  We do not want to go back in time. We do not want to go back to a 
time when we treated women who were victims of domestic violence like 
they were not really victims, like it was something they should just 
expect to happen. We do not want to turn back on the great strides we 
have made.
  One of the improvements in this current bill focuses on a 
particularly underserved community: women living in tribal areas. We 
have a number of reservations in Minnesota, and it is a heartbreaking 
reality that Native American women experience rates of domestic 
violence and sexual assault that are much higher than the national 
average.
  Our committee, the Judiciary Committee on which I serve, worked 
closely with the Indian Affairs Committee to come up with some 
commonsense solutions to the horrific levels of domestic violence and 
sexual assault in tribal areas.
  One of the problems on tribal lands is that currently tribal courts 
do not have jurisdiction over non-Indian defendants who abuse their 
Indian spouses on Indian lands, even though more than 50 percent of 
Native women are married to non-Indians.
  The bipartisan Senate bill addresses this problem by allowing tribal 
courts to prosecute non-Indians in a narrow set of cases that meet 
three specific criteria: the crime must have occurred in Indian 
Country; the crime must be a domestic violence offence, and the non-
Indian defendant must live or work in Indian Country.
  That is the way we get these cases prosecuted. I do not think we 
believe the Federal courts are going to come in and handle all these 
domestic violence cases. This is the pragmatic solution that protects 
these Native American women.
  As we were considering the Violence Against Women Act on the Senate 
floor, many of us had to work very hard to get the message out there 
that VAWA was and always has been a bipartisan bill--one that law 
enforcement and State and local governments strongly support.
  Throughout this entire process, under the leadership of Senator Leahy 
and Republican Senator Crapo, who did this bill together from the 
beginning, I have found it very helpful that whenever I needed to tell 
people why we needed to pass a reauthorization bill, I could point to 
the great work that my State is doing to combat domestic violence.
  There is the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone, who were there at 
the beginning ushering this bill through in 1994.
  Minnesota is the home to many nationally recognized programs.
  The Hennepin County Domestic Abuse Service Center that I was honored 
to be in charge of during my 8 years as county attorney in Hennepin 
County is a nationally recognized center. We opened one of the first 
shelters in the country in 1974, and the city of Duluth was the first 
city to require its police officers to make arrests in domestic 
violence cases.
  I have learned about a unique domestic violence court that Stearns 
County--that is the area around St. Cloud--has implemented using money 
from VAWA grants. The partnership, which involves trained people from 
all levels of the criminal justice system, has allowed 58 percent of 
the victim participants to separate from their abusers.
  Washington County relies on cutting-edge research to provide 
direction for officers to take appropriate action when responding to 
domestic violence calls. It is the only program of its kind in the 
entire country.
  These are the kinds of innovative initiatives from law enforcement 
that are especially critical to combating violence and are directly a 
result of the Domestic Violence Against Women Act that we have worked 
so hard to pass in past years in this Congress.
  I want to stress just how crucial it is that we get this bill signed 
into law. We have made a lot of progress over the years, and we have 
been able to work together across the aisle to build on VAWA's 
successes. But we should not just send any bill to the President. As 
you know, the House has passed its own reauthorization of VAWA, which, 
unfortunately, does not include many of the improvements the Senate 
bill includes, including the one I mentioned on tribal courts. It also 
rolls back some of the important improvements that have been made to 
VAWA in the past.
  I am hopeful we will be able to iron out these differences as we move 
forward, but I strongly believe the improvements that were included in 
the Senate bill should remain a part of the bill that gets sent to the 
President. I hope our colleagues in the House will follow suit with the 
Senate on this domestic violence bill, pass a bipartisan bill, get this 
done, and get it done soon. It simply is not that hard. Just look into 
the eyes of a domestic violence victim, look into the eyes of the 
children, and you know it is not that hard.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I just want to make a very brief comment

[[Page S5445]]

primarily for the benefit of our Republican colleagues who have been 
inquiring about whether we would have, and when we would have, a vote 
to invoke cloture to proceed to the cybersecurity legislation.
  I am hopeful we can do that very soon. From my perspective, it would 
be wise for us to move forward, to go to the bill, and see if we can 
work things out. There have been discussions between various groups who 
are interested in the subject. They are now all talking to each other, 
which is a very good sign because it is amazing how, when Senators get 
together and talk to each other, sometimes we can actually accomplish 
things in a bipartisan way.
  So my hope is that we can do that. If it turns out it does not work 
out, we can always vote no at the end of the day. But I believe we 
should go forward, that we should get on the bill, and, therefore, I 
intend to support cloture on the motion to proceed to the cybersecurity 
legislation.
  I thank my colleagues for yielding.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate the courtesy of my 
colleague from Maryland, and I promise I am going to be just no more 
than 10 minutes.


                      Tax Hikes and Small Business

  Two years ago, Members of both parties in this Chamber recognized 
that America's economic recovery was fragile, too fragile to absorb a 
tax increase. Since then, obviously, my colleagues across the aisle 
have changed their minds and experienced a change of heart.
  Yesterday the Senate voted to raise taxes. I have been amused by some 
of the headlines I have read that say the Senate voted to cut taxes, 
which is false. The Senate did not vote to cut taxes; the Senate voted 
to maintain the tax rates that have been in existence for 12 years for 
a certain class of taxpayers, while raising taxes on everyone else.
  I cannot explain the logic behind this vote. I can only assume it is 
some election-year calculus designed to galvanize the political base of 
our friends across the aisle. It most definitely is not good economics, 
and it is not good for job creation.
  For 3 years, it is no secret America has been living through the 
weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. We know from 
history, from economics, and from common sense that the last thing you 
want to do amid persistently slow economic growth is to dramatically 
raise taxes on income and investment. If you want more economic 
activity, if you want growth, then you do not burden it further. You 
relieve those burdens, which allows it to flourish and grow, which 
creates prosperity and jobs. Yet our friends across the aisle just 
voted to raise taxes on nearly 1 million American businesses.
  Many American businesses do not operate as a corporation. They 
operate as a sole proprietorship, a partnership--in other words, a mom-
and-pop operation--or even as a subchapter S or some other legal 
entity, which causes business income to be paid on individual tax 
returns not on a separate corporate tax return.
  The bottom line is, when we raise taxes on people in the top tax 
brackets, we inevitably are going to capture, in this instance, 1 
million different individuals paying business income on an individual 
tax return, which is bad for the economy, bad for jobs.
  We should make no mistake about it: Given our anemic growth rates, 
given the ongoing debt crisis in Europe, and given the economic 
slowdown in China and other emerging market countries, raising taxes on 
so many job creators could easily tip the U.S. economy back into 
recession. If we take yesterday's vote to increase taxes on so many 
small businesses together with the unwillingness to deal with the 
single largest tax increase in American history--which will occur on 
December 31, 2012, and is something that has been called taxmageddon, 
when virtually all the tax provisions in the code will expire, the ones 
passed 12 years ago--if we combine that huge tax increase with the 
sequestration, $1.2 trillion, which comes disproportionately out of 
defense spending, without exception the economists I have talked to say 
we will be in a recession.
  Why is it that our colleagues across the aisle are willing to risk 
putting America back into recession just to raise taxes? I cannot 
understand that, unless they have taken some kind of poll, done some 
sort of focus group that has laid out some strategy which is not 
readily apparent to most people.
  So the idea that this tax increase would solve our fiscal problem is 
laughable. As my good friend, the Republican leader, said yesterday, 
the additional revenue generated by the taxes that our Democratic 
friends voted for yesterday ``[wouldn't] even fund the government for a 
week.'' A week--and that is before we consider the harmful impact on 
the economy and jobs.
  Whenever I talk to business owners back home in Texas, they express 
utter bewilderment as to why Members of Congress would want to raise 
taxes during the current economic environment. Don't our friends across 
the aisle realize how many small businesses are struggling to stay 
afloat? Don't they realize that our Byzantine Tax Code and misguided 
regulations are already strangling job creation? Don't they realize our 
national unemployment rate has been stuck at more than 8 percent for 41 
consecutive months?
  No one here wants to see another recession, but apparently some are 
willing to risk a recession by putting ideology ahead of sound economic 
policy. After last night's vote, I thought of all the Texas 
entrepreneurs--more than 400 of them--who have contacted my office, 
sending their personal, inspiring American success stories. These 
stories remind us that the American dream is still alive, and it is 
inextricably intertwined with our free enterprise system. It is not a 
gift from government. It is what people earn as a result of hard work 
and the opportunities given to them in this great country.
  These stories remind us the American dream is not dependent upon 
government assistance. It is not about taxing certain people to pay for 
ideologically driven government projects like Solyndra. It is about 
offering all Americans the opportunity to earn their success and 
achieve their dreams.
  My office has received literally hundreds of entrepreneurial success 
stories from Texas, stories such as that of Gary Murray, a Vietnam 
veteran who came home from the war after three tours as a marine in 
Vietnam, who spent two decades working at IBM and then launched his own 
fencing club--a fencing club. For more than a quarter century, Gary's 
Round Rock Fencing Club has been training young Texans and producing 
world-class talent, including two Olympians, one world champion, and 
eight national champions. It is a remarkable story about someone 
deciding this is what they wanted to do, this is where their passion 
lies, making the most of it, and creating opportunities for other 
people.
  Gary started the Round Rock Fencing Club with his own money, without 
any financial support from the government. What he achieved, he 
achieved on his own. His story is a testament to hard work and human 
creativity. As Gary puts it: ``The only support I ever got was from my 
wife and family.''
  There are many other business owners like Gary Murray all across 
Texas and all across this great country.
  Before my colleagues advocate higher taxes on these businesses, 
perhaps they should spend some time talking to the job creators and 
small business people and the entrepreneurs about the myriad challenges 
and obstacles government places in their way because of high taxes and 
overregulation. I suspect my colleagues might learn something.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The Senator from Maryland.


                          Affordable Care Act

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I have taken the floor before to talk 
about the health care reform bill, to comment on the Supreme Court 
decision, which I believe history will show was clearly the right 
decision. It was the right decision on the law giving the Congress the 
power to legislate in an area where there is a national need, as the 
legislature did in the 1930s with Social Security and in the 1960s with 
Medicare.
  The health reform proposals that were adopted by Congress are within 
the purview of the legislative branch of government. The Supreme Court 
upheld that right in that decision. I also said it was the right 
decision because it allows us to move forward on

[[Page S5446]]

a path toward universal coverage, where all Americans are guaranteed 
access to affordable health care. America will now join all of the 
other industrial nations of the world to say health care is a right, 
not a privilege.
  The legislation that was passed, the health reform bill, has already 
helped American families. Let me talk about an area--I could talk about 
many--about what it has done in protecting our consumers against the 
practices, the arbitrary practices of health insurance companies. We 
already are seeing that it is in effect where families are being able 
to take advantage of the fact there are no longer any lifetime caps on 
health insurance policies. By 2014, we will eliminate annual caps on 
benefits on health insurance plans. We already have seen for our 
children the elimination of preexisting conditions, so our children can 
get policies without having restrictions on what is covered and what is 
not covered. By 2014 we will see that the preexisting conditions for 
everyone will no longer be an obstacle to full insurance coverage. That 
is particularly important for women, where we know at times they have 
been held to a preexisting condition because of a pregnancy or being 
the victim of domestic violence.
  We have seen discrimination in premiums against women. That no longer 
will be the case. I could talk about many Marylanders who are happy 
today because they can stay on their parents' insurance policies--the 
fact that they are over the age of 21. They can now stay on that policy 
until age 26.
  I want to talk about one other aspect of this law that may not be 
quite as familiar to our constituents. This provision will take effect 
on August 1, but we already are seeing the benefits. What I am talking 
about is the 80-20 rule, where health insurance companies must give 
value for the premium dollar to the beneficiary. At least 80 percent of 
the dollars we pay for premiums must go for benefits.
  Let me share with you a letter I received from one of my 
constituents. She wrote:

       I recently had a pleasant surprise. . . . two checks from 
     my health care [insurer] that were rebates on premiums paid. 
     I am someone who has to buy individual health coverage and 
     have been doing so for the last 8 years. The premiums are 
     high and the deductible is high--so I am essentially paying a 
     high price for catastrophic coverage while still paying for 
     individual doctor visits, prescriptions, etc. It is 
     frustrating, but the choices are limited and expensive for 
     individual coverage, and you don't really know how good your 
     coverage is because you don't use it unless you have a major 
     medical event. My premiums go up every year despite the fact 
     that I don't file claims. This month I received a check in 
     the amount of $139 from my current [insurer] and over $300 
     from a previous [insurer]. Both checks were rebates as a 
     result of the new health care act.
       I did not realize it, but the act requires insurance 
     companies to use 80% of the premiums they collect on health 
     care costs. . . . and neither of them hit that percentage and 
     were thus required to provide a refund. Wonderful! The bill 
     is so complicated that I do not understand a great deal of 
     it--but am very pleased with this aspect which seems to go a 
     long way in helping keep health care costs reasonable and 
     prevent consumers from being gouged . . . So thanks to the 
     Senator and all who helped with this health care act.

  I bring this to my colleagues' attention, because there are going to 
be millions of American who are going to be getting rebate checks, and 
some are going to start scratching their heads, wondering where it is 
coming from. They are going to be saying: Gee, I guess I made a mistake 
in the premiums I paid. They are returning them. They are getting those 
checks because of the passage of the health reform bill, and the 
provision in the health reform bill that requires insurance companies 
to give value for the premium dollars we pay.
  That protection is now the law of the land. Thanks to the acts of 
Congress and President Obama, and the Supreme Court upholding the law, 
those rebates are going to be received. The number of people in the 
country is 12.8 million Americans who are going to get rebate checks 
worth about $1.1 billion. Average rebate: $151. That is real money for 
people who are struggling with their health care needs.
  I am proud that in the State of Maryland, there is going to be $27 
million made available to 141,000 Marylanders, with an average rebate 
of $340 for those who get rebates in my State. Let me break this down a 
little bit further. In the individual market, like the person I 
received the letter from, the rebates for the people in Maryland will 
actually average a higher amount. They will average $496. I think that 
speaks to the fact that insurance companies have hedged their bets in 
the individual market. They tell us that, you know, we have got to 
charge a lot more because we do not know what we are getting, when in 
reality they are making a lot more money in the individual market.
  So for the people of Maryland, 38,000 of them are going to get, on 
average, close to $500 in rebates thanks to the passage of the 
Affordable Care Act, thanks to the passage of health reform, and thanks 
to the Supreme Court upholding our right to do it.
  The same thing is true in the small group markets where we find that 
there will be 3.3 million Americans getting rebate checks who are in 
the small group markets. These are the markets, of course, in which 
again the options were not as great, more difficult, because of 
insurance carriers not being as anxious to insure people in small group 
markets as they are in the larger markets.
  The average rebate per family will be $174. In Maryland that number 
again is higher, $310 for the 13,000 people in Maryland. It also 
applies to those in the large group markets. These are the large plans. 
They also are going to see rebates because the insurance carriers 
charged excessive fees. And they are going to get premium dollar 
rebates. Some 5.3 million Americans in these large plans will see 
rebates that average $135. In my State of Maryland, it will be 89,000 
people, with rebates averaging $268 a family. These are 1-year numbers. 
These continue every year. So let me tell the people of Maryland and 
the people of this country what you can expect. You might get a check 
that will be delivered to you in the mail. It will be a rebate check. 
That is as a result of the passage of the health reform bill. You might 
also see a deposit into the account that automatically pays for your 
health premiums, because the insurance carrier can make a direct 
deposit into the accounts which are paying for these premiums.

  It is possible you might find a reduction in future premiums. They 
can use it to reduce your future premiums, but they have to let you 
know that, so you realize you are getting the rebate, but it is being 
applied against future premiums. Or if the employer is paying the 
premiums, the rebates will go to the employer, but the employer must 
use it to benefit your plan. They cannot use it for themselves. It is 
used to help again the beneficiary. You will get notice of that.
  My purpose again is to make it clear that you would not have gotten 
these rebates but for the protections that are in the Affordable Care 
Act. I know my colleague from Vermont and I have been on the floor many 
times pointing out that all Americans, not just those who do not have 
insurance today, not just those who might have been discriminated 
against because of preexisting conditions, not only that 24-year-old 
who is now on her parent's policy, but all Americans have benefited 
from the Affordable Care Act, the protections that are in it.
  Now millions who thought they were being treated unfairly by their 
insurance companies are going to be able to get rebates because of 
excessive premiums. The rule works in combination with another 
provision of the law that requires rate review to ensure premium 
increases are reasonable. In other words, we have put into the law 
protections against unreasonable increases in your premiums. Insurance 
companies are now required to justify any premium increases of 10 
percent or higher. Most States now have the authority to determine 
whether these increases are excessive, while HHS reviews rates in 
States that do not operate under effective rate review programs.
  That is how federalism should work. States have an opportunity to 
act. If they do not have adequate review, we have national backup and 
protection to make sure the rate reviews are being handled in the 
appropriate way. So as our constituents start to get the benefits--
another benefit of the health reform bill, and there are many more that 
are starting to take effect, and we will hear about some more of those 
next week, on August 1--I wanted my constituents of Maryland and my

[[Page S5447]]

friends around the Nation to know we have provided that you get value 
for the premium dollar you pay for your health insurance.
  We back that up with enforcement, so if there are excessive premiums 
being charged, the insurance carriers must rebate those premiums to 
you. Millions of Americans will get the benefit, starting now. We are 
pleased that this type of protection is in the Affordable Care Act.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative proceeded to call the roll.

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             The Farm Bill

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to update 
folks about what is happening as it relates to the very important 
effort to pass a 5-year farm bill for our country--for our ranchers, 
for our farmers, for those who care deeply about nutrition and 
conservation policy for the country.
  We have somewhere between 16 and 20 million people who work in this 
country because of agriculture--the farm bill and food policy--and I am 
very proud of all the work we did together to pass a bipartisan farm 
bill. In doing that, we sent a very strong message on a number of 
fronts that we were committed to economic certainty for our growers. We 
said we understand the need to have long-term policies in place, and we 
also sent a message about disaster assistance.
  I have spoken on the floor before, as my colleagues have, about the 
very serious situation happening all across our country as it relates 
to livestock and the broad question now of drought in every region of 
the country. We also have had areas, in addition to drought in Michigan 
and other places, where food growers have been hit with an early 
warming and then a freeze again. So we have had multiple reasons to 
care about short-term disaster assistance, and I am very proud the bill 
we passed includes a very good livestock disaster assistance program 
available for this year which will be very helpful for our livestock 
producers.
  We also added provisions for fruit growers that will help those who 
don't have access to any crop insurance. That will not only include 
this year, but we looked to the future by putting in new options on 
crop insurance, new tools for the risk management agency to develop 
with growers, with commodity groups across the country crop insurance 
for the future. So as we see these kinds of weather disasters, they 
will have more certainty because there will be better coverage and 
broader kinds of coverage for crop insurance for all commodities, which 
we don't have today.
  We definitely need to pass a farm bill. We need the House to pass a 
farm bill both for long-term policy but also for disaster assistance 
right now, and we know this is an opportunity to achieve deficit 
reduction. The only bipartisan effort we have had on deficit reduction 
on the Senate floor--and I would argue probably bipartisanship on the 
House floor as well--has been through the farm bill, with $23 billion 
in deficit reduction, with major reforms, changes in policy, and 
eliminating four different subsidies that are there when growers don't 
need them or for things they don't plant anymore and replacing that 
with a risk-based, market-based system for when farmers truly do need 
us, as they do now.
  So there is a whole range of things we have done--reforms and 
strengthening conservation efforts in our country, focusing on the 
right policies around nutrition, around local food systems and so on--
and all that is in jeopardy at the moment because the House, rather 
than bringing to the floor the bill passed out of the House committee, 
which, even though it is different and I would argue doesn't have all 
the reforms we have and takes a little different approach on 
commodities and so on, it is a bill we can work with to come to final 
agreement on between the House and the Senate. But instead of bringing 
that to the floor, getting it done, we are now hearing discussions 
about just passing some kind of a disaster assistance program.
  Certainly, we need to do that. We have already passed it and we can 
strengthen it as we move forward to a conference committee and I would 
support doing that as well. But instead of having a full 5-year farm 
bill policy, they are talking about kicking the can down the road one 
more time. That seems to be a very popular strategy around here. It is 
not one the public wants us to use. They want to extend the farm bill 
for another year, with no deficit reduction, no reform, no certainty 
for farmers, and with policies extended another year that don't work 
for a lot of industries and then just do some disaster assistance. I 
think that would be a disaster.
  I know we have colleagues on both sides of the aisle--and I am 
grateful for the leadership of the chairman and ranking member in the 
House for their advocacy and leadership--who want to get this done, but 
we need to know the House leadership will allow that to happen so we 
can get real reform, deficit reduction, and the kinds of policies we 
need in place that will solve problems and provide the safety net all 
our farmers need. If we end up in a situation with just an extension, 
what happens? As our distinguished Presiding Officer knows, it would 
keep in place for another year a dairy policy that doesn't work.
  I remember, in 2009, sitting around the table and talking about what 
was happening to dairy farmers--folks going out of business, losing 
their farms because of policies that didn't work. Now the House is 
talking about extending those policies for another year rather than 
adopting the changes and the reforms we have put in place that would 
help dairy farmers all across the country. They are talking about an 
extension that would eliminate about half the support for fruit and 
vegetable growers that we put in place. In the last farm bill, I was 
proud to offer that, and we strengthened that in this farm bill. It is 
one of the largest areas of commodities, groups of commodities, in the 
country. So that would not be continued.
  There are a number of things that, frankly, would not be continued or 
available, and there are a number of things that would continue that 
are bad policy. So if we have a 1-year extension, we are continuing 
something we rejected and that everybody on both sides of the aisle in 
the House and Senate said they didn't want to do, which is direct 
payments going to farmers, government payments, regardless of whether 
the prices are high or low, in good times or bad times, and continuing 
even on things that aren't grown anymore. We all said that makes no 
sense.
  We all said, instead, that we wanted to move to a risk-based system 
and have a strong safety net there when farmers and ranchers need us, 
to strengthen crop insurance and make sure farmers have skin in the 
game; that they are sharing in the cost on crop insurance.
  But none of that happens with a simple 1-year extension. We continue 
things we have all said are not good policy, that cost taxpayers money, 
and that we shouldn't be spending our money on at a time of huge 
deficits; that we should not have those kinds of subsidies in place. We 
eliminated four of those, with $15 billion in savings alone in the 
commodity title. All that would go away under what the House is talking 
about. We would be continuing things people have said were bad policy. 
Everyone talks about reforms and changes, but this would continue the 
old ways.

  We eliminated about 100 different programs, duplication, and things 
that do not work anymore--redundancy, whatever it is. About 100 
different programs we eliminated in what we passed. They would all 
continue--every single one of them--for another year if we just do a 1-
year extension.
  Let me just say in conclusion that I encourage House colleagues to 
join with us. We can have differences in what our commodity title looks 
like, and I respect those differences. We can work those out if we have 
the opportunity to negotiate in good faith and get things done. We will 
do that. We can have differences in what should happen in the nutrition 
title, but we should not be saying to farmers and growers that we are 
going to walk away from them and put in place another kick-the-can-
down-the-road

[[Page S5448]]

strategy that keeps bad policy or no policy going, no deficit 
reduction, and puts us in a situation where, frankly, 1 year from now 
it is tougher and it is a bigger mess than ever, with our growers 
trying to go to the bank, trying to figure out what they are going to 
do when planting season comes and making decisions, all the while 
looking at us and asking: What happened here? Why did you do this?
  We did our job in the Senate on a strong bipartisan basis. It was a 
lot of hard work. We spent a lot of time here. We need to complete the 
job. If our House colleagues will come together with us; if the 
Speaker, the leadership in the House, will decide to give us a vehicle 
with which to do that, I am very confident we can get the job done.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, I 
know the Senate majority leader is in discussions with the Republican 
leader, and I know the hope is we can soon have the vote on a motion to 
proceed to S. 3414. But as yet I have not been informed there has been 
the necessary meeting of minds. I hope it will be soon, and I hope 
everyone will support it.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Hoeven pertaining to the introduction of S. 3445 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. HOEVEN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the call 
of the quorum be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              The Economy

  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, there has been a lot of talk about one 
of the major issues we as a nation are going to have to deal with, and 
certainly the Presidential candidates will be talking about it during 
the next few months, and that is that we have a $16 trillion national 
debt and we have a $1 trillion deficit. I think all Americans 
understand this is a very important issue, and it is something we as a 
nation are going to have to grapple with.
  How we deal with the deficit and the national debt is certainly one 
of the most important and interesting issues we are going to have to 
address.
  What I find interesting is that when we talk about the deficit and 
the national debt, there seems to be, among some of my colleagues, 
collective amnesia. It is as if this debt and deficit popped up 
yesterday and we have no understanding of how we got to where we are 
today.
  I would like to take a moment to remind some of my friends that back 
in January of 2001--not so many years ago--when President Bill Clinton 
left office, this country was not running a deficit, it was running a 
very significant surplus of some $236 billion. That is a very 
significant surplus. As a matter of fact, in 2001 the Congressional 
Budget Office projected that we would have Federal budget surpluses 
totaling $5.6 trillion from 2002 to 2011. In other words, when Clinton 
left office there was a very significant surplus, and the projection 
was that surplus was going to go up and up. What happened? Well, that 
is a question we need a little bit of time to discuss.
  I find it interesting that there is no context for deficit reduction. 
Let me suggest that, in fact, some of the people who come down to this 
floor and talk the loudest about the deficit and the national debt are 
precisely those same people who caused the national debt of $16 
trillion and a deficit of over $1 trillion.
  How did we get to where we are today from the time when Clinton left 
office and we had a significant surplus? No. 1, many of our deficit 
hawks who are coming down to the Senate floor telling us about all the 
programs we have to cut for the middle class, working families, our 
children, and the elderly, are real deficit hawks. My goodness. When it 
came to the war in Iraq, many of us voted against it since it didn't 
make a whole lot of sense. We also noted that our deficit hawk friends 
went to war--I believe for the first time in the history of America--
and forgot they would have to pay for that war. I think some of us 
might hold a little bit of doubt in some of the comments of our friends 
about their real sincerity and concern about deficit reduction when 
they went to a war in Iraq which will end up--after we take care of the 
last veteran wounded in that war 80 years from now or whenever--costing 
probably $3 trillion.
  Well, if you spend $3 trillion to go to war, forget to pay for it, 
and then come to the Senate floor and tell us how concerned you are 
about the deficit and the national debt, some of us are saying: Well, 
maybe that is not the case. Where were their concerns about the deficit 
when they went to war when we had a deficit hawk President named George 
W. Bush? So that is one of the major reasons we are running a $1 
trillion deficit right now.
  The second reason is--and you don't have to have a Ph.D. in economics 
to understand it--that if in the middle of a war they decide to give 
huge tax breaks, including $1 trillion over a 10-year period to the top 
2 percent, the billionaires and millionaires, so $1 trillion is not 
coming into the Federal Government, that adds to the deficit. I ask my 
Republican friends where was their concern about the deficit and the 
national debt when they gave $1 trillion in tax breaks to millionaires 
and billionaires?
  The third point I wish to make is that we are in the middle of a 
horrendous recession. Unemployment is sky high and underemployment is 
sky high. People have lost homes and their life savings. People are 
hurting. This recession was caused by the efforts--and I must confess, 
not just a Republican effort but also a Democratic effort--and the 
bipartisan desire to deregulate Wall Street because people believed 
that if we deregulate Wall Street and allow insurance companies to 
merge with commercial banks and investor banks and we do away with 
Glass-Steagall, my goodness, those folks on Wall Street--honest people 
with great integrity--would just create wealth for all Americans. That 
is what Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and all these guys were telling 
us. I was a member of the Financial Services Committee in the House and 
never believed that for one moment. It never made an iota of sense to 
me. Anyway, these guys fought for deregulation. We had deregulation, 
and as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on 
Wall Street, we were plunged into the terrible recession we are in now.
  One of the points that are very rarely made on the Senate floor is 
that today, at 15.2 percent as a percentage of GDP, revenue is the 
lowest in more than 60 years. So it is easy for people to come to the 
Senate floor and say we have to cut, cut, cut. They forget to tell us 
that as a result of the Wall Street-caused recession, at 15.2 percent, 
revenue is the lowest as a percentage of GDP in more than 60 years. 
That is an issue we have to deal with.
  You know what, we don't increase our revenue when we give more tax 
breaks to billionaires. We don't increase our revenue when we say that 
at a time when we have tripled military spending since 1997, maybe we 
need even more for the military. That is not a way to reduce the 
deficit.
  Now, what do my Republican friends and some Democrats say? Well, they 
come to the Senate floor and suddenly--after going to war without 
paying for it, after giving huge tax breaks to the rich, after 
deregulating Wall Street--realize we have a deficit problem, and they 
are very concerned about this deficit problem. They come to the Senate 
floor and say: The only way we can go forward is to cut Social 
Security. Social Security is funded independently. It hasn't added one 
nickel to the deficit, but we are going to cut Social Security anyway. 
We are going to cut Medicare, we are going to cut Medicaid, we are 
going to cut Pell grants, we are going to cut education,

[[Page S5449]]

and we are going to cut environmental protection. That is deficit 
reduction.
  Are we going to ask millionaires and billionaires, who are doing 
phenomenally well, whose effective tax rate is the lowest in decades, 
to pay one nickel more in taxes? No, we can't do that, but we can cut 
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and every program that 
the children, seniors, and working families of this country depend 
upon.
  Now, to add insult to injury in terms of this movement supported by 
big-money interests that have so much influence over what goes on here 
in Congress, it is important to look at the playing field of the 
American economy today to understand what is going on. Are the people 
on top really hurting and suffering? Are large corporations today 
really struggling under onerous corporate taxes? The answer is, 
obviously not.
  We don't talk about it enough, and too few people even mention it, 
but I do, and I will continue. It is important today to understand that 
the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and 
income since the 1920s and the most unequal distribution of wealth and 
income of any major country on Earth. Why is that important? It is 
important to know that. Before we cut Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid, education, and the ability of working-class kids to go to 
college, we have to know the condition of how people are doing today. 
The middle class today is shrinking and poverty is increasing. When we 
cut food stamps and Medicaid, we are going to hurt a whole lot of 
people, and in some cases very tragically.
  Just last week a member of my staff went to southwest Virginia, and 
she spent the day at a program in which thousands of people in that 
area were lining up to get dental and health care because they didn't 
have any health insurance. There are 45,000 Americans who will die this 
year because they don't have health insurance and can't get to a doctor 
in time. There are people who say: Let's cut Medicaid. There are people 
all over this country who can't find a dentist. There are children who 
are suffering from dental decay. Let's cut Medicaid. Well, I don't 
think so.
  If we look at the country, the middle class is shrinking, people are 
hurting, but people on top are doing phenomenally well. Very few people 
talk about it. I am going to talk about it. In the last study we have 
seen in terms of income distribution in this country--and that is what 
happened between 2009 between and 2010--93 percent of all new income 
created over that year went to the top 1 percent. I will say it again. 
Ninety-three percent of all new income in that year went to the top 1 
percent. The bottom 99 percent had the privilege of sharing the 
remaining 7 percent. Yet, when we ask the people on top to maybe pay a 
little bit more in taxes, oh my goodness, there are lobbyists all over 
Capitol Hill saying: We can't afford to. We are down to our last $50 
billion. We just can't afford another nickel in taxes. We need that 
money now. Thanks to Citizens United, we can pump that money into 
political campaigns.
  One family who is worth $50 billion is going to put $400 million into 
the campaign. Another guy who is worth $20 billion can't pay more in 
taxes, but he does have hundreds of millions to pour into political 
campaigns.
  In terms of distribution of wealth, which is a different category of 
costs than distribution of income, we have an incredible situation. I 
hope people understand what is going on in this country, where one 
family--one family, the Walton family, of Wal-Mart--now owns more 
wealth at $89 billion than the bottom 40 percent of the American 
people. One family owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. Do we 
know what some folks want to do here? They want to repeal the entire 
estate tax and give that family a very substantial tax break, because 
owning $89 billion is obviously not enough. They are struggling. We 
have to give them a tax break while we cut Social Security, Medicare, 
and Medicaid. If that makes any sense to the American people, I would 
be very surprised, and it does not make sense to the American people.

  According to a February 2011 Washington Post poll, while more than 70 
percent of Americans oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare, 81 
percent supported a surtax on millionaires to reduce the deficit. My 
guess is if we go to New Hampshire, Maine, or any other State in 
America and we say to people, we have a deficit problem and the choice 
is between cutting Social Security or asking millionaires and 
billionaires to pay more in taxes, there is, in my view, no State in 
America--no State in this country, no matter how red it may be--where 
people will say: Cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, but 
don't raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. I don't believe 
that is true anyplace in America.
  Today, the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth of our Nation 
while the bottom 60 percent owns less than 2 percent. The top 1 percent 
owns 40 percent; the bottom 60 percent owns less than 2 percent, and 
there are Members of this Senate coming to the floor and saying we are 
going to punish the bottom 60 percent and we are going to give more to 
the people on top.
  There was a study that recently came out that talks about the ability 
of billionaires and corporations to use tax havens. What we know--and I 
am a member of the Budget Committee--is that millionaires and 
billionaires and corporations in this country are avoiding paying about 
$100 billion every single year by using tax havens in the Cayman 
Islands, in Bermuda, Panama, and other countries. Maybe, just maybe, 
before we cut Social Security and Medicare, we might want to pass 
legislation to make those people start paying their fair share in taxes 
and do away with those tax havens.
  Let me conclude by saying we are in a pivotal moment in American 
history. If we as a Nation do not get our act together, in my view, we 
will move even more rapidly in the direction of an oligarchy, where we 
will have a few people on the top with incredible wealth controlling 
not only our economy but also, through Citizens United, the political 
life of this country. We are seeing that playing out right here on the 
floor of the Senate, with people who are turning their backs on working 
families and the middle class, and at a time when the wealthiest people 
are doing phenomenally well, fighting for more tax breaks for people 
who absolutely don't need them.
  I hope the American people pay rapt attention to this debate, and I 
hope the American people get involved in this debate, because if they 
do not, mark my words, within 4 months, a handful of people, supported 
by corporate America and the big money interests, are going to bring 
down to this floor a deficit reduction proposal which will cut Social 
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and give more tax breaks to the 
wealthiest people in this country. It will have virtually all 
Republican support. It will have some Democratic support. If we don't 
aggressively oppose this approach, that is exactly what will happen.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I appreciate my friend yielding, my dear 
friend from Vermont.

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